Employee Profile
Amy Dumas
Wild Horse and Burro Program Lead
California State Office
Amy Dumas is doing what she loves. She is the Wild Horse and Burro Program Lead for California.
Amy is a transplant from Wilmington, Delaware, where at the age of three, she rode her first horse. She was hooked! From then on she was a horse junkie. And since she did not own her own horse, she "mooched" rides where ever she could. At age 16, when most teens are dreaming of owning their own car, Amy asked for a horse. She got a car.
Her love of animals took her to Cornell University where she studied animal science, earning her bachelor's degree in 1990. She then branched into conservation biology at Yale University, earning a master's degree in 1995.
After all that schooling it was time for a break. She moved to Montana in 1995 to go to work at a dude ranch, where she thought she could get closer to the critters and have a little fun before embarking on a career. She finally got her first horse, at age 31, by buying Eisen, a mustang from the Sheepshead horse management area in Oregon from a friend. She went on to adopt several other mustangs before her long-time love affair with wild horses lead to a position with BLM as a wild horse specialist in Tonopah, Nevada in 2000.
Besides spending time with her horses and burro, she loves animals; good food; ballroom, swing and salsa dancing; walking her dogs in the mountains; fresh powder for skiing; and clear water for snorkeling. When asked what her greatest accomplishment is with BLM, she replied, "Getting out of Tonopah before retirement."
Currently she is in the midst of moving to the Sacramento region where she will no doubt find enough room to be with her "family," all with four legs and a tail.
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