(COLORADO SPRINGS) — As concerns among the horse community mount on wild horses, a Colorado Springs organization is fundraising to support the wild west icon.

“They’re an American treasure,” said Makendra Silverman, a supporter of the Cloud Foundation. “They’ve been here much longer than we have as white folks.”

Fears of losing that icon, drove a fundraising gala at the Flying W Ranch on Thursday evening.

“Our job is to try to protect wild horses in their homes,” said Ginger Kathrens, former executive director of the Cloud Foundation. “That’s where they’re the safest. That’s where they’re the happiest.”

Money from the gala goes back to directly help support the Cloud Foundation, which came about after Kathrens documented a wild horse — Cloud — through three documentaries for PBS.

“I filmed from the day I was born in Montana, in the Pryor Mountains, and I documented him throughout his entire life,” Kathrens said.

Now, the Cloud Foundation continues to advocate for the well-being of wild mustangs.

“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is rounding them up with helicopters, scaring them, putting them in pens where they’re tightly packed, getting diseases, separating the mothers from their children and then slaughtering them,” said actor and keynote speaker of the event, Adam Bartley.

In fact, in the spring of 2022, over 245 wild horses died at a Cañon City facility run by BLM, and wild horse advocates say this is a common side effect.

BLM said of that incident in 2022, “It’s actually an area the BLM has determined is not suitable for wild horses and a lot of those horses were gathered… which means these horses, when they came into our care, oftentimes had health issues.”

Still, horse advocates said they would like to see them out of the holding facilities altogether.

“Right now, we have more horses in holding facilities — likely — than were in the wild at a cost to the taxpayers,” Kathrens said.

And, when they are not in a holding facility, Kathrens said they then go somewhere else.

“We just recently adopted five little newborns that were from the Wind River Indian Reservation,” she said. “Mothers went to slaughter, all the mares went to slaughter.”

It should be noted BLM has said in the past they are concerned the wild horse will over-graze an area and damage to the ecosystem.

However, Kathrens agreed there needs to be herd control.

“You can do that with reversible fertility. That you can just start. So, it’s not brain surgery.”

Through the gala, advocates hoped to show people their own wild mustangs they have rescued and adopted, to gain more of a respect for them in the wild.

“People seeing what these amazing horses are close up, they’ll have more appreciation for how they live in the wild,” Silverman said.

The goal — to get more people on board to help keep the icon of the American west wild and free.

“In a world where… we’re waiting for the next technology gadget to come, we’re losing contact with the land and with… this incredible, beautiful gift of nature that this country has,” Bartley said. “We deserve to have a country that preserves this icon.”