While keeping up an intensive pace with the Antelope Complex roundup team and legal actions, our founder took a moment to speak with Grace Da Rocha of the Las Vegas Sun.

Those of you that have attended our webinars or called Laura for advice, know she speaks fast and can cover a lot of territory. Many of you have said “Dang, I wish I recorded that.” It looks like Grace did just that.

Those of you that know wild horses might catch a translation automation  mistake or two (“sources” should be “horses” and where Laura starts to quote that national number of Herd Management Areas and then jumps to the state number because the article is about Nevada horses: the translation reads “183” and should be “83.”) But those of you that know what is going on will catch where the automatic audio translator made error.

This is a great piece and we wish national news would let advocates get this deep.

Thank you Grace and Las Vegas Sun.

Q+A: LAURA LEIGH:

A plea for change: Nonprofit agency fights to protect Nevada’s wild horses

By Grace Da Rocha

Friday, Aug. 4, 2023 | 2 a.m.

Many Nevadans may be familiar with the video of Sunshine, a Palomino horse with a coat that shone like gold in the sun, being chased by a helicopter for 30 minutes during a June roundup.

The horse was fleeing on three legs, his fourth having sustained a “catastrophic compound fracture” as he tried to escape.

After this incident and a number of others where the safety of wild horses and foals has been compromised, Wild Horse Education, a Reno-based nonprofit,recently filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management alleging abusive treatment of horses during these roundups.

Laura Leigh, leader of Wild Horse Education, called this “a desperate plea when everything else fails.

“Right now, we’ve got to fix this, because this is life and death,” Leigh said. “That’s literally one of the most heartbreaking pieces of the story is that that’s not a place (people) actually agree. Words are very different than actions, and BLM saying ‘we care’ and then doing this again and again and again and again, is not ‘we care.’ Words have to match actions.”

The Sun sat with Leigh to discuss wild horse roundups in Nevada, suggestions for more humane ways to gather these horses and her passion for protecting wild horses.

Many observers see wild horses being rounded up and aren’t sure why this is happening. Can you detail the reasoning behind the practice?

No. 1, Nevada has more wild horses than all other states combined.

Just like with any wildlife, habitat loss and fragmentation is kind of at the heart of it. When people think of public lands, they think of wide open spaces, and they’re not wide open spaces. It’s a series of fenced grazing allotments for livestock and mining. I just saw an article about the number of mining claims (and) the way they’ve just jumped just over the last two years. All of that stuff is also happening where the wild horses live, and so there’s always been this debate over who gets the resources, and how do we get those resources — and wild horses are part of that conversation.

Habitat loss and fragmentation is the driver behind the challenges faced by all wildlife, wild horses included. And then that’s where we get into the complicated debate: Should we have them out here or not?

You can read the rest of the piece at the Las Vegas Sun HERE.

You can see our latest update from the Antelope Roundup HERE. 

Since July 9, 29 wild horses have died.

What does the lawsuit filed late last month ask for? click HERE

Thank you for keeping us in this fight!

If you are shopping online you can help Wild Horse Education by choosing us as your charity of choice on IGive