Madeleine Pickens, the wife of the billionaire philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, has purchased a 14,000-acre Nevada ranch with an eye toward turning it into a nonprofit sanctuary for wild horses, writes the Associated Press.

Ms. Pickens wants to relocate 1,000 of the nearly 34,000 horses now managed by the federal government, many of which are kept in holding facilities. If approved by the federal Bureau of Land Management, the plan would mark the first time the government has released a large number of horses to such a private sanctuary.

The property, purchased for an undisclosed price, comes with grazing rights for another 540,000 acres. The sanctuary will give the horses “their natural habitat back, along with a place that Americans can come and view the horses and learn about the land and American culture,” said Stacie Daigle of the group Saving America’s Mustangs.