How a wild horse or burro perceives the world is very important to understand. If you work with any animal, understanding them is key to a productive relationship. If you are an agency tasked with managing that species as a part of an integrated whole with other species and human industry, this fact becomes critical.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been managing wild horses and burros for over 50 years. Main drivers of the passage of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act: preserving rapidly disappearing populations of wild horses and burros and ending brutality. In order to achieve those objectives, understanding what you are tasked to manage should have been step one… and it wasn’t.

A roundup plan sits on top of a pile of papers that never disclose how a horse/burro uses the range and what is needed to protect the horse/burro on that range and integrate the information into planning. Those restrictions might limit industry (private profit) and create inconvenience for agency personnel.

A roundup becomes a very simple illustration of BLMs failure to ever try to understand a horse.  In much the same way that on range management is data poor and ignores “what a horse is,” so does a roundup.

BLM has done roundups in essentially the same way they did them 50 years ago. There has never been any real attempt to understand the horse to make capture safer, just propagate what is convenient and expedient. `The attempts they claim they have made, have more to do with restricting public access than changing how they do things.

We must gain an enforceable welfare policy, now.

Anyone that follows roundups, or watches the news, knows that enforceable welfare rules are needed, badly. “How a horse sees” is just one of the things BLM never takes into account; a roundup is run for the ease of humans. We carry active litigation to demonstrate that BLM has stopped short of making their Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) actual policy and enforceable. An open rulemaking process must take place. Rulemaking is part of every single actualized federal policy, except for the BLM Wild Horse and Burro program. Right now, rulemaking is even taking place for exotic animals on display. You have more of a say in how a private vendor does a tour of a tiger sanctuary than you do with hw your own government, while using your tax dollars, captures and houses wild horses/burros.

There is still time to attempt to get an amendment into the current spending bill for formal rulemaking to incentivize BLM to start the process of creating a formal welfare policy.  

You can help. We made it easy: Just Click HERE

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Above: In July of 2016, BLM said they would review the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Policy (CAWP-IM-2015-051) to include things like trap depth and other issues that address incidents like the mare at Conger that broke her neck after she and her stallion crashed into panels in a “hidden” trap. She went down. Instead of stopping and removing the dying mare, BLM ran more horses in over her as her stallion and foal looked on. BLM never did any review and then open CAWP to formal rulemaking with public comment and finalization of a welfare policy. (It’s why we had to go back to court and the case is active now.)

“How a horse sees the world?” is one simple subject BLM does not seem to understand or even care to contemplate. It serves as a example of the obstinance of the agency to consider any change, no matter how simple that change would be to implement.  

As far back as ancient Greece, where chariot racers used them to keep their horses focused and prevent them from being distracted by the other horses, the crowd, or the surrounding environment, blinders/blinkers have been used. It takes a lot of mental energy to ignore the signals horses are getting from their nervous system that there is something moving in the “predator threat zone” of their vision. How a horse sees has been contemplated since ancient times, but not by BLM today.

Horse vision and flight zone (Consortium of the Animal Transport Guides Project (2017a))

The eye of the horse developed for grasslands’ existence as a large prey species.  Laterally placed eyes with a horizontal pupil allow a broad field of view. Each eye used separately is called  “monocular vision.” Each eye sees approximately 200-210 degrees. Many people mistakenly think horses can see 360 degrees. Horses have two clear blind spots: a cone shape directly 3 feet in front of them and right behind their head, over their back, and behind the tail. Monocular vision is great for seeing more of the world, but lousy for depth perception and seeing right in front of you. If you look at the eyes of a predator species, they line up on the front of the face creating “distance to prey.” Binocular vision is needed for true depth perception.

Placement of the eyes on the side of the head decreases the range of binocular vision (using both eyes at the same time in the same field of view) and binocular vision is very limited in horses. Horses use their limited binocular vision by looking straight at an object the same height as their head or by raising their head when looking at a distant object. Closer objects near the ground require a horse to drop its head so they can see distance and depth. A horse will raise or lower its head to increase its range of binocular vision. An example: A horse needs to lower its head to see before moving down an incline, or raise its head before attempting a jump. Only in moving the head can the horse judge depth.

A horse being pushed fast into the catch pen (the first set of panels at a trap) is processing an insane amount of information, in a panic, and has lousy depth-perception and, literally, can’t see objects right in front of it’s face. BLM gives them no time to determine where they are before pushing them into an alley to load on a trailer because they have more horses coming in and want to clear the trap. “Settle time” rarely ever happens.

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Above: Angled approach and a small chaotic trap pen more than likely caused this broken neck at Swasey in 2020. BLM felt the trap was “fine” because they were only catching a lot of smaller bands of horses. There was no consideration of how a horse sees, the distance from a human the horse would need to feel safe and not panic, and to make matters even worse, they used rebar to ensure the panels had no give. In 2020, BLM finally hired someone to supposedly review and revise CAWP and start enforcing a policy. No review, revision or formal rulemaking has taken place. 

What your horse sees when approaching a gate (quotes from Horse and Rider): “To him, the gate appears to be a hologram—a collage of silver arms, shimmering into and out of focus, reaching forward and back as he approaches and passes it. Why he sees it that way: As a prey animal, your horse has monocular vision, meaning he has one eye on each side of his head.”  “Only when your horse has directed both eyes on an object directly in front of him—beyond his front-end blind spot—do both eyes focus together in binocular vision. Regardless of whether he’s eyeing the gate—or any other up-close object—using one eye or both, your horse’s lenses are much less flexible than yours. His poorly developed ciliary muscles are ill-equipped to make more than small, slow adjustments—much too small, and much too slow to allow him to make quick, informed decisions visually.  This is why Mother Nature has programmed him to first flee to safety, then to check out the situation from a safe distance.”

Research being done today, in fact, shows even a distinction between horses raised in a domestic environment and those born and bred in the wild. A large number of domestics seem to demonstrate a nearsightedness, while wild ones indicate a proclivity toward farsighted vision.

In other words, with all the activity at a trap, horses need time to see what is right in front of them. Trap size and placement should not be based on how many they expect to catch, but how to set a trap with a safe stopping distance and clear eye line for horses. BLM routinely builds traps as small as they can. Setting a trap is work and the smaller the wings and trap are, the less work they have to do.

Drive trapping is the same as it was 50 years ago. When you make a safety suggestion the reply is usually a raised voice answering, “We have been doing this for 50 years!” in a “how dare you make a suggestion” tone. (And if you make a suggestion, be ready to be pushed back where you cannot see at the next trap.)

WHE has the largest base of documentation from wild horse roundups over the last 15 years. Heck, we started doing “daily updates” before BLM ever did. Roundups are not rocket science. Roundups should be run using simple common sense with an eye for safety concerns and the will to do a bit of research to confirm. We carry an expertise that is repeatedly ignored.

Above: On this day at Confusion, more than one horse broke a neck or was injured. Remember, in the vast majority of these broken necks at trap and in holding, they do not happen because a horse is trying to use their head as a battering ram… it is because they can’t see the obstacle clearly while under intense pressure.

Remember, understanding a horse or burro would be the first step in management. It would also be the first step to making capture safer. BLM has ramped up roundups to historic levels. “Expanding fertility control” is something BLM usually applies as part of a helicopter capture after they get to their target numbers. BLM refuses to step back and create actual data-based management planning that would create a real Appropriate Management Level and is instead pushing decades old political numbers they have “affirmed” by just retyping them. (On management planning they are fighting us in court, too.)

In the one area everyone should agree on, a real enforceable welfare policy, BLM is fighting us hard in court so they do not have to listen to anyone outside the agency (through public participation) and can simply keep doing things as they have for 50 years.

Carroll, J., C.J. Murphy, M. Neitz, J.N. Ver Hoeve, and J. Neitz. 2001. Photopigment basis for dichromatic color vision in the horse. Journal of Vision 1:80-87.

At a recent roundup, one of our observers introduced a simple conversation with BLM when someone said something about a red scarf. “They can’t see red,” our team member said. It was not only depth perception and motion sensitivity, BLM didn’t seem to understand that horses do not see color the way we do.

Horses see colors along a continuous range from blue to yellow. Horses do not see reds, oranges, and greens in the same way humans perceive them.  This kind of vision is called “dichromatic vision.” Research demonstrates horses perceive color somewhat like red-green color blindness in humans (red and related colors, appear more green). Example: Orange post, cattle guard or snow fencing, might stand out to the human eyes, but would not be much of an obvious color for a horse to distinguish. This is one of the reasons show jumping is now moving away from orange to high contrast “white against blue” for jumps.

Do you think understanding how a horse sees the world could help design ways to keep them safe on the range and to handle them with fewer deaths and injuries?

We recently did a survey that included a few other points on safety and asked if you wanted to participate in open rulemaking for welfare. The response was a resounding “Yes!” The article includes a call to lawmakers we hope you take the time to make this week, (More HERE)

In the video below you can see how at the ongoing East Pershing roundup disaster is just a step away as tarps flap in the wind scaring horses and trap design does not consider a horses vision.

Additional thoughts:

BLM is prohibited from using helicopter drive trapping during foaling season, but fails to define foaling season with data.

BLM must use “accepted equine practices” to handle wild horses. Trainers, eventers and veterinarians have been using Heat Index and Air Quality restrictions for a long time. Even how a horse sees is taken into consideration by those designing high end racing and jumping.

An interesting note about BLMs current “policy that is not a real policy” is that they contracted with UC Davis back in 2015. However, UC Davis has done extensive research on heat, air quality, dust, how a horse sees, etc. and none of it seemed to make it into any real consideration under CAWP. Back in 2019 we did a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out how much was paid (entirely) under the contract and are still waiting for a reply.

These “paid for policies” BLM keeps falling back on are not how the government outlines policy making. A policy is only enforceable when it goes through public process under rulemaking.

Your support keeps us in the fight to protect and preserve our wild ones. We are in the field, in outreach with lawmakers and in the courts. Our wild ones deserve to live free on public lands and free from abuse.

Thank you for keeping us running for the wild.