It is tradition to post a “year-end” video and message. Often, these messages are the hardest for us to do. Trying to condense an entire year into a few images or words is simply impossible.

The theme of 2023 could be “rebuilding momentum.” At the turn of the last decade in 2010, we have built momentum to gain an enforceable welfare policy, gain transparency and the beginnings of data-based on-range management for our wild horses and burros. Shortly after, we reached a few years where fewer wild horses and burros had been removed from the range then at any time since the 1971 Act has passed.

That momentum rapidly slid backward as big corporate joined together to create a plan that slammed populations of our herds down, kept them there and ignored any move toward fixing the broken program. There was no habitat preservation, no data requirements, no effort to fix the flawed boundary lines, forage allocations, zero-data set (“appropriate”) population numbers. This policy was adopted back in 2019 and run to the present. We have all watched the hard path backwards in action.

There was no attempt to preserve our herds. There is a big difference between the word “conservation” and the word “preservation.” Conservation generally means that a resource is protected so it remains useful to industry. Preservation generally means that industry is pushed as far out as possible, preserving the resource in as natural state as possible.

This year, you have helped us “upset that applecart,” so to speak. We are gaining real momentum toward bringing back a conversation that pushes preservation (and all that word stands for). We are gaining momentum toward gaining real enforceable rules to protect our wild ones from abuse. The sheer lack of transparency is, once again, finding a spotlight.

For WHE, this has never been a comfortable position to be in. We are seen often as “outliers” and “not going along.” But this has always been our place in advocacy and why we were able to bring about the momentum we had in the past that was turned by big corporate politics.

This year, with your help, we are gaining some of that momentum again. 

With your help, in 2024 we can turn that momentum back toward the goal of transparency, preservation and protection. 

Thank you for an amazing year.

In 2023:

Our 3 teams have a combined 212 days of roundup coverage. Along with the time in field, each and every day we brought you comprehensive frontline reporting. We also created in-depth conduct reviews that have been sent to lawmakers and used in litigation we filed this year.

Our field teams documented 27 herds; critical habitat, herd and range health, seasonal movement, foaling season and the impacts to herd behavior from aggressive use of fertility control without any care for the impacts to the herd itself.

Our NEPA team sent over 35 substantive comments off on everything from roundup plans to transmission lines, mining projects and livestock. The team worked on over 20 (still) active appeals in the land use courts.

In addition to filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and then having to fight to gain the information, we craft in depth reports using that data. This year, finally, we are beginning to get replies on requests from 2019! (We do not include appeals to get FOIA information in our litigation count.)

We filed 2 new federal court cases (on top of the ones we already carry). These cases are critical. One is focused on the fact that there is still no enforceable welfare standard and BLM fails to disclose data to justify removals. The second, is to stop BLM from continuing to ignore their stated obligation in management planning for an important historic herd and entering into a deal, again, with livestock permittees.

We are really close to gaining the first official attempt by BLM to define a site-specific foaling season. Those of you that have been advocates for a long time know how significant that is to creating a safer environment both on-range, during capture and while BLM slams our wild ones with various fertility control agents (many of which can cause sterility for the lifetime of the mares treated).

There is so much more we have done this year and we will be writing about some more of it this week. 

You can see roundups in review from the 2023 fiscal year HERE. 

You can take action to stop abuse HERE

Litigation update

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

Thank you so very much for keeping WHE running for the wild.