Following the deaths of multiple wild horses during public land roundups in Nevada this summer, activists are pressing for urgent changes in the way the federal government controls the West’s sprawling equine population.
“This is probably the worst roundup I’ve seen in a very, very, very long time,” Laura Leigh, founder of the Nevada-based nonprofit organization Wild Horse Education, told The Hill.
“This is July — this is a tense time on the range, even when there isn’t a helicopter flying,” Leigh said. “The stallions are more agitated, the mares are more agitated; they’re going to be more likely to try to escape. You’ve got the heat.”
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts these “gathers” to both protect horse health and prevent “unnecessary degradation of public lands,” using helicopters to wrangle the animals into a corral and then onto a trailer. They are then transported to federal facilities, where they are either prepared for adoption or cared for on off-range pastures, according to the BLM.
Activists have been fighting the gather and removal process for years, arguing that the practice is harmful to animal welfare and that the noise from the choppers terrifies the horses. Now, they are calling out what they see as the particularly brutal effects of the process over the past few weeks.
From July 9-24 alone, Leigh and her team counted at least 19 wild horses that died during roundups in the eastern Nevada Antelope Complex-South and Antelope Complex-North gathers.
Three animals suffered from broken necks, three from broken rear legs and several others from heat-related illnesses, the activists observed. By Thursday, they said the death toll was up to 21.
One episode, captured on video last week, involved a Palomino stallion named “Sunshine Man” who endured a fracture while attempting an escape and was eventually shot, according to Leigh.
“He has mares, he has babies. He’s being pressured from above by the scariest predator he’s ever known and drawn in near human beings that terrify him,” she recalled.
With this incident in mind, Wild Horse Education this week filed a lawsuit against the BLM in the U.S. District Court of Nevada, calling for judges to address what the group characterizes as abuse issues, policy violations and failures to take action that would reduce suffering.
“The BLM’s helicopters chased stallions, mares and foals, causing such panic that many animals were injured or broke their legs and had to be euthanized,” the lawsuit states.
Leigh also found fault with the fact that these roundups take place in July, which animal rights activists still consider to be foaling season — when mares give birth to their foals.
The BLM, however, only prohibits the use of helicopters to gather wild horses during what the agency designates as “peak foaling season,” between March 1 and June 30.
Science meets these definitions somewhere in the middle, with Colorado State University researchers characterizing “primary breeding season” as stretching from March 1 to Aug. 1.
“It’s pretty easy to understand why a nursing mare or a pregnant mare and little foal would have difficulty,” Leigh said. “What people don’t understand is that the stallions are also in high gear, trying to protect their families.”
The extreme heat conditions that have overtaken much of the country over the past few weeks have also affected the animals, Leigh continued, noting that death tolls could be much higher, as those that occur following transport are unknown.
“BLM does not count the deaths that occur once those horses are trucked off the range, hundreds of miles in a moving tin can, in a heatwave,” she said.
The BLM defends its process
Jenny Lesieutre, a spokesperson for the BLM’s Nevada Wild Horse and Burro Program, defended the agency’s approach to gathers, stressing that agency staff members “prioritize the well-being and humane care of all wild horses during all gather operations.”
“The BLM mourns any loss of life that occurs during gather operations, and we work to minimize such incidents as much as possible,” she said in a written statement.
From the beginning of the operations on July 9 through July 19, the BLM gathered 1,173 wild horses, Lesieutre explained, noting that eight deaths have been connected to the operations, constituting about 0.6 percent of animals gathered.
“There have been an additional four animals that were humanely euthanized as an act of mercy due to pre-existing conditions,” she added.
In total, the BLM has said it aims to gather about 2,000 animals from Antelope North and 1,107 from Antelope South and treat and release 15 with fertility control — typically injected as a vaccine from a distance, using a dart gun — to limit population growth.
Prior to initiating these gathers, the population of the north half of the complex was approximately 6,852 animals, and that of the south was about 2,122 animals — or about eight times and six times their appropriate management levels (AML), per the BLM.
Agency estimates indicate that there are about 49,268 wild horses and burros in Nevada, out of a total of 82,883 across the West. The maximum AML, defined by the BLM as the number of horses and burros that can thrive in balance with other resources, is 26,785 animals for the whole region.
Regarding health and safety, Lesieutre stressed that the agency has an on-site veterinarian that monitors animal conditions and adheres to a Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program. Meeting these standards, she explained, prohibits contact with helicopters, as well as traveling excessive distances or gathering in extreme temperatures.
Stressing that peak foaling season occurs in late April and early May, Lesieutre explained that the BLM avoids using helicopters through June as a precautionary measure, and that because foals grow rapidly, they can maintain speed with their mothers soon after birth.
As far as the use of helicopters is concerned, she said pilots are better than horseback riders at keeping mares and foals together, and the historic practice of horseback wrangling resulted in more injuries.
With respect to high temperatures, Lesieutre said these conditions are monitored closely and reviewed throughout the day to ensure animal safety.
“If temperatures exceed what is healthy and safe for the animals, the BLM will pause gather operations,” she said. “At the Antelope Wild Horse Gathers, operations have halted before temperatures reach 95 degrees.”
Pushing for ‘humane alternatives’
Wild Horse Education is not alone in pressing for change — the California-based American Wild Horse Campaign last week described certain BLM practices as “inhumane and unacceptable,” accusing the agency of keeping disoriented animals in holding pens amid triple-digit temperatures.
The horses, captured during an Antelope Complex roundup, appeared to be distressed at the BLM’s Palomino Valley Center for Wild Horses and Burros in footage published by a volunteer.
“There is a lack of shade at that Palomino Valley Center in Reno, and unfortunately, it is a tremendous animal welfare issue,” Holly Gann Bice, director of government relations at the American Wild Horse Campaign, told The Hill.
“The BLM is fully aware of it,” she continued. “This is not the first time that this situation has been brought to their attention.”
Gann Bice stressed that while she and her colleagues are aware of the need for population control, they “advocate strongly for humane alternatives to the helicopter roundups and removals.”
“Fertility control is a great option, because it is administered to female horses in the wild,” Gann Bice said. “It’s also not just more humane for the horses, but it’s also more cost-effective.”
The American Wild Horse Campaign, in a partnership with the Nevada Department of Agriculture, operates the Virginia Range Horse Fertility Control Program, through which the group uses dart guns to administer the porcine zona pellucida vaccine to female wild horses. The vaccine requires a primer and booster dose the first year and then annual boosters thereafter.
“It has been very successful,” Gann Bice said. “Foal births have actually gone down 66 percent compared to when our program began and 2020.”
Asked how the team members identify which horses have been vaccinated and which need boosters, Gann Bice said they take photos of all the animals, all of whom “have some unique identifying markings.”
The American Wild Horse Campaign also cited some cause for optimism Friday, a day after the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee advanced major, bipartisan language that could change the way the BLM manages wild horses and burros.
The language, included in the fiscal 2024 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies funding bill, would protect the animals from slaughter and increase the use of fertility control by allocating $11 million of the BLM’s budget toward this method.
The Senate committee decision comes a week after the House Appropriations Committee took a similar step, passing reforms supported by Reps. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) in the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies bill and accompanying report.
The report outlines the committee’s support for “a multi-pronged management strategy that includes the use of fertility control, targeted removals from the most heavily ecologically impacted and populated areas, expanding off-range holding facilities, and increasing the number of animals placed into private care.”
Also included is a recommendation that the BLM “consider alternatives to the use of helicopters and manned fixed-wing aircraft in managing wild free-roaming horse and burro populations.”
Titus, with the support of Schweikert and Cohen, also recently reintroduced the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act, which would prohibit certain uses of aircraft in wild horse gathers.
‘It doesn’t have to be this way’
Leigh, from Wild Horse Education, said that while she supports Titus’s bill, she feels that the legislation would be much stronger if it included provisions for investigating capture methods and for exploring safer options.
Gann Bice, on the other hand, described recent congressional action as proof “that it doesn’t have to be this way,” stressing fertility control “is a winning solution for horse advocates, agricultural interests, environmental interests and the American taxpayer.”
But she emphasized that it “doesn’t make sense to blame the horses for ecological damage when they are largely outnumbered by livestock within their habitat.”
Leigh offered a similar perspective, noting that “livestock can outnumber wild horses in an allotment area by 100-to-1.”
She also expressed concern that cattle grazing enclosures, which are often gated and surrounded by barbed wire, sometimes end up trapping errant horses without water or food.
“That’s not because we have too many horses. It’s because the habitat is too fragmented,” Leigh said. “Habitat fragmentation and habitat loss is the main driver of problems for all wildlife, wild horses included.”
Although such cattle grazing can have major consequences, public lands ranching is only responsible for about 3 percent of the country’s meat supply, added Leigh, noting that the industry’s “time has come and gone.”
“We never talk about how industry is impacting wild horses — we try to blame wild horses for an impact to industry,” she said.
Chris Pritsos, director of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Nevada, countered this notion, stressing that the amount of land available to ranchers is an important factor in how much meat the U.S. can expect to have on the market.
But beyond this consideration, he continued, the land is used by other wildlife, such as deer and elk, whose populations are also managed.
“To say that wild horses don’t have to be managed, and that they can dominate the use of that land, is not right and infringes on the right of native animals,” he said.
Pritsos is a proponent of fertility control and co-administrates a multistate research effort that focuses on identifying the most effective management tools in a changing climate. One of their projects involves fitting female horses with long-term intrauterine devices.
Regardless of which fertility control method is being used, Pritsos said he believes gathers are critical to accessing a critical mass of animals.
“If you are able to gather the horses, then you can individually treat them with the fertility agents and then mark them, so that then you know which ones have been treated,” he added.
Such strategies, Pritsos explained, are becoming even more important as the effects of climate change, extreme heat and drought take a toll on herd management.
“Those horses need help. It’s really sad when you see these pictures of these horses, just dying out there because of malnutrition, lack of water,” he said.
“We’re all for protecting them, but they have to be managed. They can’t just be allowed to overrun the range lands,” Pritsos added.