There are 24 days and 11 hours until the new year. 

A tradition at WHE is to share the images and videos that touched our team. Not necessarily the ones that may have made the news or are included in our court filings to stop unjustified removals from continuing and to end abuse and gain an enforceable welfare policy. 

The “Top Ten” viewed articles, video and images can be seen HERE.

Our documentation is a key piece of the work as a baseline for all we do; identifying issues, creating legal standing and exhibits, etc., as well as reporting to the most important (and neglected) people involved in public lands management, the public.

In 2020, I wrote a journal style piece from the road: “Each image I take has a visceral history behind it; a reality of smell, taste, touch that carries a knowledge of the actual fight to save that range, that herd, that horse from being hit by a helicopter.”

The same holds true for every photo: the full experience is not captured in a frame. The image is a window into the memory.

Of course the roundups of 2023 stand out and are burned into the minds and hearts of our team, never to be forgotten. (Roundups, 2023 HERE)

This year I wanted to take a minute to share images of some of the “nooks and crannies” on the range. Each image is hundreds (or even over 2000 miles) of the next. I want to talk about something we don’t talk about as much as we should because the bulk of our time is spent fighting against the onslaught brought about by big corporate paper pushers (some of which all of you know as part of Path Forward) that leaves habitat entirely off the table and actual preservation of herds that rely on that habitat is vacant… it just revamps the actions built on status quo.

There are places left where wild horses can get to where cattle can’t get at due to terrain and fences and mining roads have yet to be cut. No massive truck traffic. Water has not yet been pumped out for livestock troughs or replaced with a toxic leach pit.

In these areas you find wild horses, sage grouse, songbirds, a badger or two. You see hawks, eagles, pronghorn and, sometimes, elk. Grasses have gone to seed. Waters may be seasonal, but life moves with it.

These areas are not places where BLM just removed a bunch of wild horses to “restore” some kind of “thriving natural ecological balance.” These are places where industry has not yet trampled.

A real “pet peeve” of mine is when BLM uses that phrase “thriving natural ecological balance.” What that phrase means is that BLM has permitted so many fences, roads, open pits with load and dangerous equipment and toxic substances, springs to dry up because they approved more pipelines for cows and mines, etc. … and now they need to blame wild horses and/or burros for the damage.

BLM knows that environmental folks will jump on board because it is almost impossible to stop industry (livestock and mining) and the resource pie shrinks fast. If you remove the horse, there might be enough for that sage grouse or pronghorn a hunter wants to shoot next season (many wildlife groups have a large hunting support base; that might seem strange to those that live outside the West, but it is true).

If I had a magic want and removed all wild horses and burros from western rangelands, those lands would still be in a deadly spiral of degradation.

If I instead used my power to remove fences, livestock, stopped the pumping of ground water, stopped mining from expanding, etc.? The land would heal and the rhythm of the wild would create “thriving natural ecological balance” as it always has.

You can still find it in the nooks and crannies that will remain nameless…

This amazing stallion was taken from the range. The area was not being zeroes out and a release was planned at Surprise. But a lot of time and energy was spent capturing him. We nicknamed him “Spartacus.”

He was not one of the ones chosen for release, yet. Our team is waiting to see the post-roundup census results that BLM promised they would do (they did not do a census before the roundup). BLM has agreed that if the census comes back low, they will release additional horses… and we are rooting for Spartacus to go home.

His capture moved volunteer Marie Milliman and she wrote a stand alone piece HERE. 

Colette Kaluza is an amazing record keeper and brings her experience as a court reporter to her work. When Colette reported in from the Antelope Complex and talked about seeing a family really close-up, right before the chopper targeted them, there would never be a way to describe the experience in mere images.

“In the light of dawn this beautiful family stood so close to me as I got out of my vehicle to follow BLM to the observation location. They looked right at me and accepted my presence. The absolute dichotomy of peace and astonishment of acceptance of a human, yet knowing the brutality this small family would face, no matter how hard or far they ran, as they were separated forever was so heavy it was physically present.”

Images and words are both inadequate to describe the lasting impact on an observer.

As our team continues to run for the wild, in the field and in the courts, we thank you for sharing this journey with us. We thank you for being active advocates for our wild ones. We thank you for caring and for your support.

Words are, once again, inadequate to describe our gratitude.

End-of-year funding is critical to all nonprofits to keep programs running into the new year. WHE is no exception. Without you, none of our work is possible.

Thank you for keeping us in the fight!

If you are looking for a calendar or gift, you can shop the WHEStorefront on Zazzle HERE.