In 2014, William E. Simpson moved to a remote hillside near Yreka, California, close to the California-Oregon border. He was trying to get away from his previous buzzing internet business, seeking isolation in nature. It didn’t take him long to notice that he wasn’t alone: He was sharing the hills surrounding his humble cabin at the edge of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument with bobcats, coyotes, elk, mountain lions, wolves, bears and more than 120 wild horses. At first, the horses kept their distance, just like all the other wild animals. 

But eventually, a skinny, pregnant white mare with a foal in tow approached him. Simpson had once studied veterinary medicine, and his training kicked in. “I thought she was probably suffering from parasite overload and fed her some oats with an anti-parasite I had on hand,” he recalls. A few days later, the mare brought her entire family. Over the years, the horses have come to him with injuries, such as cuts from the barbed wire abandoned farms had left behind or gashes from mountain lion attacks.

William E. Simpson has become closely acquainted with the horses that roam the land surrounding his cabin. Credit: Michelle Gough

“It’s all voluntary,” Simpson says. “They are wild. You can’t put a halter or anything over their head. They just come and present their injuries. Some let you do more than others.”

When the 38,000-acre Klamathon fire tore through the hillsides in 2018, he had an “aha” moment. He and his wife Laura defied evacuation orders and helped the firefighters navigate the remote dirt roads. They stayed to defend their small ranch, but also to watch the horses. “I wanted to see how the horses reacted to the fire,” Simpson says. “Would they panic? Run the opposite direction and get entangled? Nobody had ever really done a study about that.”

The horses remained calm and kept grazing. “They are used to fires,” Simpson realized. “They have been here for two million years.” He now attributes the fact that his cabin and the surrounding hills were largely spared by the fire to the horses. “Each wild horse consumes about 30 pounds of grass and brush a day,” Simpson has observed. “They reduce the wildfire fuel, keeping the wildfire risks at bay.”

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