Frequently Asked Questions
What is Women in the Wilderness?
Women in the Wilderness is a project to help save the equine spirit of the American West. We are a group of three women creating an adventure documentary to educate the public about the mustang crisis on public lands. In October 2021, we took 9 mustangs on a 26-day journey through southern Wyoming and filmed the journey.
What is the mission of the project?
Our mission is to educate as many people as possible about the wild horse problem and ultimately, inspire action to help find a solution to this complicated issue. During our pack trip, we interviewed various stakeholders to provide an unbiased synopsis of the problem. We also hope to inspire people of all ages to challenge artificial gender boundaries and pursue their own dreams, especially young women.
How is Women in the Wilderness going to make a difference?
We believe that in today’s world, film is a powerful tool to enable change. While we hope our film increases adoption rates of wild horses in holding facilities, we know this is not a sustainable solution to the overall problem. We want to stimulate conversation, increase awareness, and inspire action. The first step to all of this is education.
What is the goal of the film?
We envision our audience leaving our film being able to have an educated conversation about the problem and the knowledge to form an opinion on the issue, including possible solutions. We think more people need to know and be talking about this problem to stimulate change.
Are you a non-profit?
Women in the Wilderness is a registered LLC. We are not a non-profit but we were grateful to have worked with our fiscal sponsor, Wyoming PBS, to accept donations via 501c3. We no longer have a fiscal sponsor partnership, but are accepting donations via Venmo at any time. If you are interested in making a donation, please click here. All donations will go directly to filming and editing costs, helping us create an even better movie!
How is this project funded?
We recently finished up a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for post-production expenses. We were able to raise funds to help us edit over 800 hours of high-quality footage, add music, captions, and a few other things to finalize our documentary. In February 2020, we completed our first crowdfunding campaign with the same incredible platform we are currently using called Seed&Spark. We reached over 100% of our goal by successfully raising $50,200 towards our horse care and trip expenses.
We are also partnered with a fiscal sponsor, Wyoming PBS, for those who would like or need to contribute through a 501c3 outlet. In March of 2021, we ran a charity auction fundraiser where we rasied over $2,300. In the same month, we completed a matching campaign thanks to a generous and anonymous donor. Our donor matched $10,000, thus we were able to raise another $20,000 for filming expenses.
How long was your trip?
Our trip was roughly 250 miles and took 26 days to complete.
Where did the horses come from? were they wild?
Our horses came from two different leasing situations: 4 horses were leased from Camp Cheley in Estes Park, Colorado, and the other 5 were leased from Yellowstone Horse Rentals. As much as we would have LOVED to have the experience of adopting our own mustangs, COVID forced all of the auctions we were hoping to attend to be online. Additionally, we recognize that returning these horses home to their owners was better for the horses than having to re-home adopted horses. However, all of our horses were wild prior to us leasing them.
When is the documentary coming out?
Documentaries typically take a long time to produce (sometimes 3-5 years!) but we are hoping to release ours within the year. In March of 2024, we completed the rough cut of our film, leaving only graphics, music, and colorizing to complete. Our film team is working hard to release the film as soon as possible!