Have you ever been to a place where you can drive 100 miles
and not see a human being?
Have you ever watched a golden eagle hunt?
Have you ever watched a wild horse herd?
Have you ever seen a wild horse born?
Those things are incredible.
We're on the verge of losing not only the horses but the land they stand on.
It'll be gone before people even know it, before people even know they had it.
I'll take you back to the beginning.
Her name is Laura Leigh.
I ran an animation studio.
I'm an artist, I'm a painter.
I lost my business.
Our work was shipped overseas.
I went through an abusive relationship.
Our company was destroyed, our house was destroyed,
our family was destroyed, and he wanted me dead.
I put everything that was important to me into the back of that pickup truck.
Got my children to a safe place and I fled for my life.
I figured I'd come here, it was far enough
and I went to a round-up.
[Laughs]
I wanted to see the truth.
It amazed me that something could be born free and wild.
At the end of the day, we send it off for a horrific death in Mexico.
And when I asked about why were we doing this?
They used the phrase, "We do this for their own good."
I understood that kind of abuse.
I understood that kind of language.
I understood that kind of justification.
Your husband punches you in the face and throws you down the stairs,
you know what he says when you hit the bottom?
"This is for your own good."
Those kinds of things stick with you.
I had no job, I had no money, I had nothing else.
And the only way to fight that is document, document, document, document.
And that's what I did.
I learned how to write litigation.
I went every day, every day.
I mean, I became gum on their shoe.
[Archival footage] ...a federal lands violation.
... we talk about health, and we talk about wildlife out there...
[Camera shutters]
And I've won every case.
We now have a humane handling policy for those wild horses.
Put it on my tombstone.
So, you know, I don't know. Does that mean I have a voice?
Does that mean my life has meaning?
Does that mean there's something wrong with me?
All of those things that I thought.
Well, I did something no one else has ever been able to do
as a homeless woman with no money.
Horses as a thing won't disappear.
There'll be domestics.
There'll be people turning horses out in their pastures.
But if we lose our wild horses in the wild,
it's an indication of what we as human beings have become.
It's not something I will give up easily.
I'm not going away.
If there's a herd out there I could fight for, I'll be there.
I'll be there.