10 days and counting

By Laura Leigh on June 20, 2024

Punctured eye

As the sun rises 10 days from now the sound of a helicopter will slice the still morning air and begin the helicopter drive trapping season to complete the aim of the 2024 fiscal year schedule. From now until October 1, over 10,000 wild horses and burros will lose their freedom in a helicopter chase.

Wild ones known by many, known by few, some the public have never seen, will all be captured without any enforceable welfare policy simply because the agency tasked with their protection refuses to create real oversight, analysis and continues to deny public participation and open review.

Black Mountain, Hardtrigger and Sands Basin where foaling season was skewed to late summer and fall from PZP use but BLM failed to change the time on that range of prohibition of helicopter use. A new foal was trampled on the first day.

What exactly is the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP)?

Back in 2015, after relentless litigation, BLM created CAWP and told media, courts and those litigating (WHEs founder) that they were releasing a test version of standards that would someday go through internal and external review and then be finalized as a set of rules, a policy. Year-after-year BLM said to be patient as they were doing the review.

For a very short period right after the draft was created there was a measurable improvement in conduct during capture. Rapidly, things stagnated. By 2017, seemingly overnight as the lobby agreement in “Path Forward” were being incorporated into reports to Congress, BLM slid back in time to the days before CAWP.

Only in 2021 did we find out there was never a review and BLM simply typed the word “permanent” on the document and continued to try to claim to media, Congress and advocates CAWP was their “policy.” It took until 2021 for BLM to even hire someone to run the program and (supposedly) to answer questions.

BLM does not have CAWP oversight personnel onsite at each roundup. When they do go to a roundup they might be there two or three days out of a month or two of continuous operations. Roundups are overseen by the people in charge of doing each roundup, the same person that writes the paperwork (gather EA) and supposedly gather all the range data and does all the analysis. This same person is essentially policing themselves from start to finish on a removal.

Below: The last helicopter roundup of winter season, East Pershing had no CAWP oversight.

From BLMs website: “The CAWP formalizes standard operating procedures surrounding animal care and handling; establishes formal training programs in animal welfare for BLM personnel, partners and contractors; and implements internal and external assessments for all activities undertaken in the Wild Horse and Burro Program.”

In 2023, BLM only published two CAWP team trips to roundups. The Antelope roundup where we filed litigation and Desatoya where they had a new contractor. All other roundups in fiscal 2023 had no oversight at all; those doing the actions policed themselves.

Of course, BLMs CAWP team gave a great score to one of the most disturbing roundups in years, Antelope:

Antelope Complex North Wild Horse Gather
Antelope Complex South Wild Horse Gather
Desatoya Wild Horse Gather (new contractor)

You can see our public daily updates from the Antelope Complex HERE

In 2023, the BLM CAWP team did not review one single intake facility (short-term holding) that received nearly 20,000 captives. Countless wild ones died after being rounded up in extreme temperatures, suffered injuries, illness and suffered capture stress.

BLM has no air quality or heat index standards and runs horses in conditions where weather warnings tell you not to even walk your dog.

Instead of moving CAWP into the realm of enforceable policy to protect the health an welfare of wild horses and burros, BLM only seems to use CAWP as a public relations tagline or a mechanism to attempt to confuse Congress, media and the courts into thinking they are providing oversight and “they care.”

That is why we are back in the courts.

Reveille, July 2023.

Our teams are gearing up to head out to begin our public reporting from roundups for the season. But our team does so much more. We target specific roundups and do in-depth reviews, collect additional data and create recommendation reports.

We follow herds through holding where our investigations have shown that on average, 1 in 9 of the wild horses or burros that cross the threshold of the jute wings will die at some time in the following 6 months.

Our litigation directly addresses the lack of an enforceable welfare policy and is active in the courts, now. We are pushing to expand our work against abuse as we expand our work to gain actual on range management that includes habitat protections.

You can help.

We need to get funding designated to directly address abuse, management and loopholes to slaughter closed. What this means is that Congress needs to fund processes that open doors or defund processes to close them.

Designated funding for formal rulemaking for an enforceable welfare policy. BLM’s internal standards are failing to provide mandated protections from abuse.
Designate funding to clear the backlog of Herd Management Area Plans (HMAP) to address site-specific management goals and objectives and define the site-specific actions to meet them.
Defund the Adoption Incentive and Sale Programs. BLM should only be funding the standard adoption program and get rid of gimmicks that have no safeguard to comply with the law to protect horses and burros from slaughter.
No funding should be used for sterilization of wild horses or burros. BLM has not, in any way shape or form, demonstrated through scientific methods that this extreme action is even something that requires contemplation.

Click here to send the above message to your reps in the House and Senate.