Above: Faces of some of the wild horses recently captured at the Pancake roundup (Sand Springs West and Pancake Herd Management Areas, Jakes Wash Herd Area and Monte Cristo Wild Horse Territory) in Nevada taken to the off-limits to the public facility in Sutherland, Utah. Most of these horses have homes if we could just get in and get a tag number. (At Pancake the ability to document capture and holding was extremely limited. Then BLM trucked the vast majority to off-limits facilities.)
This time of year we get flooded with requests from members of the public asking us if we can find photos of a wild horse they have adopted or are considering adopting. People ask us to find tag numbers of horses they have seen in our roundup photos as BLM will only facilitate an adoption with a tag number, not a photo.
We wish we could fulfill each and every request. However, often access to clearly document capture has been obstructed in some manner. Over the last year most of the wild horses captured were sent into facilities “off-limits” to the public, we cannot do a welfare check and post pictures with tag numbers. (We are still in litigation surrounding the newly proposed off-limits facility in Winnemucca, NV. The days of taxpayer money being spent on facilities where those that foot the bills cannot see how their money is spent, needs to end.)
When you are looking for information on a wild horse you want to adopt remember BLM will give you the Herd Management Area (HMA) name on your paperwork. However, the roundup (or range info) you are looking for will usually be labelled by the complex of HMAs the area is part of.
Above: Access to document the Antelope Complex in Nevada (Antelope, Antelope Valley, Goshute, and Spruce-Pequop HMAs) was on again off again. Some of the horses went to Palomino Valley Center in Reno, many of them went to the off-limits facility in Axtell, Utah.
Wild horses captured in 2021 are being scattered all over the country. The public was never able to do a single welfare check on any of the off-limits facilities prior to horses being shipped out to other facilities, deemed unadoptable and shipped to off-limits holding (or sold) and/or adoption events. The vast majority of these horses have not been seen since they were captured. The vast majority will never be seen again, never given a chance to have that “tag number” photographed so someone could have it pulled for adoption.
Above: Owyhee Complex ( Little Owyhee, Owyhee, Rock Creek, Littler Humboldt and Snowstorm Mountains Herd Management Areas) in Nevada, wild horses were also trucked off to Sutherland off-limits facility in Utah. We were unable to track them as we have in the past to facilitate adoptions. We could not even help the orphans get homes like we have in years before. (At Owyhee the ability to document capture was extremely restricted and even completely denied on several days. BLM trucked the horses to an off-limits facility)
The agency still does not understand that the vast majority of adopters see these horses as “Not Just a Number.”
People want to know where their horse came from, why they were removed, how they were removed and what happened to them (and their families) after capture.
We have hot linked each HMA Complex name in this piece. You can click on the name of the operation to help you find some additional information.
Above: Surprise Complex (Massacre Lakes, High Rock, Wall Canyon, Bitner, Nut Mountain and Fox Hog) in California, wild horses were sent to Litchfield and Palomino Valley Center; both facilities closed their doors to the public after capture. (Observation of capture and temporary holding was better during Surprise; along the lines of what had been agreed to after years of litigation. Most districts have forgotten and see public interest as a nuisance.)
We will continue to do our best to fulfill your requests for documentation from range, roundup and holding to help you find the wild horse you have (or will) adopt.
During roundups we take hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photos each day (in addition to running video). By clicking on the name of the operation you are looking for, or by using the search bar on the website, you can find some of what happened each day and images of some of the captured to help you search events.
We will post additional photo/video documentation (as time allows) where we are getting multiple requests. Older roundups are harder for us to search to find individual horses than recent ones, but when time allows we search old drives. For older roundups you can put the HMA and year in the search bar (we still have many of the old pages still online).
We are getting a number of requests centered around the Surprise Complex (Massacre Lakes, High Rock, Wall Canyon, Bitner, Nut Mountain and Fox Hog). The video above is one we have not published before due to time and space constraints.
The cumulative totals from the Surprise Complex operation still do not add up; 1216 wild horses were captured and 1141 were shipped/released/died. This leaves 75 unaccounted for. This type of discrepancy is not unusual. BLM no longer publishes facility statistics. In the past we could use wild horses received at the facility to compare numbers to see where the error was (often the number a facility receives would add up to the number captured and simply imply that a days shipping was not included in the totals made public. However, with the stubborn refusal of the agency to (once again) add facility reports to update pages it leaves a real sense of unease.
You can view more on the media offload page we are creating for the Surprise roundup HERE.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the on-range BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program. Special interests rule our ranges for profit lines and the wild horse or burro is often scapegoated for the fragmenting and destruction of habitat industry does.
But the the things we should all agree on are that abuse during capture, neglect in holding ends and that everything possible be done to find safe homes for the wild ones that have lost everything (home and family) and that they be kept safe from the horrors of the slaughter pipeline.
To that end, how can BLM claim to be concerned about the welfare of our wild horses and burros if they shuffle them out of site?
We wish you well in your journey of a lifetime if you bring a wild one into your family.
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Categories: Wild Horse Education
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