GILLETTE, Wyo.—With wildfires raging in Colorado, volunteers in Wyoming have offered to make room for displaced horses on their ranches.
The Facebook group “Horse Evacuations East” has garnered support on its event page “Colorado Fires—Available Temporary Horse Shelter,” and includes offers to board the horses from horse owners living as far afield as California and Virginia.
A lot of that support has come from inside Campbell County in northeast Wyoming.
Dee Stotts, who lives just outside Gillette, said she was planning to make the drive to Colorado if it meant that she could rescue horses.
She posted her phone number and address on the Facebook page and was waiting for a response. “The minute they say bring them, we’re on our way,” Stotts tells the Gillette News Record ().
Stotts, who has organized donation drives to the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, had tapped others she knew in the area who could make room for horses on their land.
Via her connections, whether on Facebook or personal ones, she said she knew of 11 horse trailers in the area ready to make the drive into Colorado.
“We’ll make it a caravan if we have to,” Stotts said.
Talayna Tiegs of Newcastle heard about the rescue efforts via Stotts. She said she would be willing to put up horses at her home.
Elizabeth Wheeler, who has 90 acres of land outside of Wright, also has volunteered to put up horses that can be rescued from the fires.
Wheeler said she was reluctant to take the trip down to Colorado herself because of the confusion that can surround issues like ownership and questions of where the horses can go.
Stotts posted a recommendation on Facebook that owners in the area spray paint phone numbers on the horse’s sides to make them easier to return them.
Members of the group had met with Colorado resident Lloyd Harsha, who gathered volunteers in the city of Fountain, Colo. About six volunteers were meeting at a truck stop, Harsha’s wife said. Their initial plans to go to Woodland Park, Colo., had to be scrapped because of fire conditions. The group now will work with shelters in the area, she said.
———
Information from: The Gillette (Wyo.) News Record,
