Salt River Wild Horses of Arizona Challenge Painting #446

"Red Mountain"
Salt River Wild Horses
Drawing
8 by 10 inches Graphite on Watercolor Paper
by Linda L Martin Artist
NFS
Limited edition of 20 signed prints available by request
info@llmartin.com

In the United States there are approximately  between 200,000 and 500,000 wild horses that are currently not protected by the Wild Horse and Burro Act. Those that survive only do so because groups of people local to where they live form management associations to document them and help develop legislation and management plans to protect them.

The majority of un-protected wild horses today were either not on Federal Public Land at the time of Act or  they were on private, state or reservation land that never fell under the protection of the 1971 act. I am also told that some herds and bands were not counted as part of the 1971 census due to political maneuvering as well as miss understandings as to owner ship of the wild horses during the first Census after the Wild Horse and Burro Act was passed and put into effect. As I have stated one such herd was the Virginia Range horses in Nevada.

The Salt River Wild Horses of Arizona are another such a herd.  I am told that the wild horses  run on both National Forest Land as well as Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation.

The one thing that the Salt River herd has that most other wild horses do not is an amazing desert river that flows year long. And there they spend much of their time raising their young, interacting with visitors to the Tonto National Forest. and  have developed some very unique skills involving water that are usually only seen in the East Coast Herds among the ponies who frequent the marshlands.

This drawing is my first Study of the Salt River Wild Horses and will be the first in a series of paintings and Drawings I will be undertaking in the next 6 weeks. I am collaborating with Dave Saunders one of the Arizona Photographers for many of the paintings, including this drawing. Thanks Dave!

If you would like to see more images of the Salt River Wild Horses you can follow their page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaltRiverWildHorses
Blogger's note: Some of the factual information about the Salt River Wild Horses was missing and incorrect and I made corrections  on 9/14/2013 .  Thanks to the Salt River Wild Horse Team for updating me and helping me share corrected information.