To follow our team reports from Triple B where our team has been onsite every single day since day 1:

Team reports from 7/15-8/9 HERE. From 8/10 and ongoing HERE. 

One run captured 13 wild horses and a foal was roped. The total for the day (at the same trap as the day before) were: 14 (4 Stallions, 7 Mares, and 3 Foals) captured.

No one went to holding today from the public, so our observer went.

Many of you are curious about what happens to the compromised foals? We can’t show you much because of snow fencing and prohibitions; but you can see the foal not wanting to rise in a pen where it appears segregated with mom. After a time we could see human legs in the image and they touched the foal to check for responsiveness, a bucket of what we assume is water and electrolytes (like Gatorade for people) offered and then the foal lifted. Later we see it laying down again.

BLM said much about the “agitated mare” in the pen, not too much about the foal. We are assuming the foal is being watched to see if it can be transported the 3 hours to Sutherland (or the 4 hours to Axtell in Utah). We imagine the mare is very agitated after her baby was run, separated, trailered, put in the pen and obviously not well.

No mare/foal pair of this description was captured on 8/19 (you can see in the video there was no palomino captured today). We know of two chestnut foals with a blaze (in the trap zone the last two days) that have chestnut moms. One has an auntie palomino with a dusky foal. However, we could not get a good look at the blaze or mom, one of the pregnant Palominos could have given birth and we did not see the foal yet, and we do not know what zone these two were captured in or when.

BLM will simply answer “Check our website,” when we ask how or when something occurred. Does BLM on ground know the website never contains much detail? It never says when or where an incident occurs. It never says when the wild horse was captured.

Example: Yesterday on the website BLM reported that a bay foal was put down BLM said it had been kicked by another horse. 

We had two observers onsite and, although we heard a commotion at the trap we could not see and inquired about it, we were not told what happened while we were onsite. Our team member asked BLM at holding today where the incident occurred: trap or holding? The question seemed to be an annoyance and she was told to check the website and that all the info is there. When she tried to explain it was not, the tone implied she was somehow remiss in checking the website. She finally got an answer: the death occurred at trap, the foal was kicked by another horse after capture in the trap pens. 

“Hope” died after his feet literally began to fall off at Broken Arrow; a facility that was still under construction but used to bring in over 2000 wild horses from the range. photo copyright Laura Leigh

BLM used to publish vet reports during and after roundups online. In fact, in 2010 the vet report for the foal named “Hope Springs Eternal” (the foal whose feet literally began to fall off) was said to be online as it was standard practice. BLM had failed to publish it. When they finally did it said, “An eight month old colt arrived at the Indian Lakes Facility on about 1/20/2010 and was in very poor body condition and had sore feet.  It was placed in the sick pen area where treatment could be administered.  Over the next ten days, the colt was treated with phenylbutazone (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug), penicillin (an antibiotic) and foot bandages (one front foot and both hind feet) on three occasions before it was euthanized on 1/30/2010.”(The circumstances surrounding this foal are what began this organization; the need to form a formal organization, and not to simply provide info to all the various orgs, became more than apparent to our founder. The massive and relentless litigation to open roundups daily to public view and the court fight to gain a human handling policy came soon after.)

Vet and facility reports from both trap site and holding facilities (30 days post capture) used to be online. Today, the lack of information coming from the BLM (from range surveys to simple shipping information) is astounding. These reports need to be public again.

The lack of public information increases contention and compounds the lack of public trust. If decision making is based on data, share that data… or the public will continue to determine that there is something to hide and BLM is just running on big corporate backdoor deal making.

Isn’t is funny what one run at a trap can bring into the minds of long time advocates?

Right now the BLM is using a “2022 population statistics report” to assert that there are over 82,000 wild horses and burros on the range. This report is being used to continue to ask for funding that is accelerating the status quo into collapse of the Wild Horse and Burro Program.

The date on the report is 2022… the data is not. Where is 2022 data, surveys, documentation?

Where is the quarterly report BLM was supposed to provide Congress to get all this extra money?

A close look at the 2022 population statistics report… the only document BLM is basing the massive funding request for 2023 on, click HERE. 

Help keep us in the fight.