Velma Bronn Johnston

Velma Bronn Johnston (March 5, 1912 — June 27, 1977), also known as Wild Horse Annie, was an animal welfare activist. Johnston led a campaign to stop the eradication of mustangs and free-roaming burros from public lands. She was instrumental in passing legislation to stop using aircraft and land vehicles from inhumanely capturing wild horses and burros.

Velma Bronn was born in Reno, Nevada to Joseph Bronn and his wife Gertrude Clay and grew up on the family’s "Lazy Heart Ranch". In 1923 she contracted polio and was confined to a cast for six months. She married Charles Johnston and they took over operation of the ranch and later turning it into the "Double Lazy Heart Ranch", a dude ranch for children. The name of the ranch was changed so as to include Charles in the family business. Johnston also worked as a secretary for an insurance company.

Driving to work one day, in 1950 Johnston was following a truck overcrowded with horses and saw blood dripping from the back. She followed it to a slaughterhouse and upon learning they were free-roaming horses gathered from private and state lands in Nevada's Virginia Range she took action to ensure more humane treatment of free-roaming horses when captured and transported.

On her initiative and Nevada State Senator James Slattery's actions, Nevada passed a bill that made free-roaming roundups by planes and cars illegal on state and private lands. Although the free-roaming horses on all lands in the State were under the jurisdiction of the State estray laws, Federal lands, administered chiefly by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, which comprise almost 85% of the lands in Nevada were exempt from the law due to objections from the agencies that the law would hamper attempts to remove the horses from the federal lands. As large parts of Nevada were thereby excluded from the bill, Johnston continued to fight for protection of the free-roaming horses throughout the state and across all the federal lands in the west. She initiated a massive letter writing campaign by students to Senators and Congressmen. On September 8, 1959, the campaign resulted in the federal legislature passing Public Law 86-234 which banned air and land vehicles from hunting and capturing free-roaming horses on federal land. This became known as the Wild Horse Annie Act.

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