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By this time next year Madeleine Pickens hopes to have the world's largest wild horse sanctuary open for customers -- some 30,000 mustangs that the federal government considered for euthanasia or selling to slaughterhouses overseas.

That idea horrified Madeleine, wife of Texas oilman billionaire T. Boone Pickens, until she devised a better plan.

"I really just got despondent," she tells PEOPLE Pets. "I would sit at nighttime and lay there and think, 'What can I do?'"

Sidestepping political wrangling, Pickens and her animal-loving husband have offered to buy the horses a one-million acre retirement home. She's still negotiating to buy or lease the land out West.

Wild horses got federal protection in 1971, but there has been constant friction with cattle ranchers over grazing rights. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to cut the current wild herd of 33,000 down to 27,000.

Every year, the BLM rounds up horses for auction to horse lovers, but as care costs rose, buyers disappeared. The BLM is spending $27 million this year to house 30,000 horses, triple the number held in 2001.

Madeleine, who bred racehorses with her late husband Allen Paulson, says she worried that some of her own horses died in slaughterhouses. Her current husband has lobbied to end domestic horse slaughter, but many horses are shipped to Canada or Mexico.

Pickens says the wild horses are already neutered, so the herd won't grow -- except from newly rescued mustangs. And the Pickens want to build cabins so tourists can enjoy the animals as one of America's national treasures. "And you can bring your dogs!" she says.

Tourism may offset costs, but she has no illusions about making money. "You never make money on horses; they eat you out of house and home."

Carol Vinzant