Swasey Utah mares, temporary holding 2024

It might feel like a bit of breathing space as two large roundups are removed off the schedule. The only thing that has changed is that for the next couple of weeks you won’t be flooded with images of active roundups and the failures of BLMs welfare program. 

BLM has changed the helicopter drive-trap schedule again. 

The capture of 800 wild horses and 143 burros at Twin Peaks has been put on hold, probably until the 2025 fiscal year schedule releases funding in October.

Triple B, the capture of 2,355, was also pulled. WHE carries active litigation in this area and have briefs due next week.

We suspect both Twin Peaks and Triple B were pulled due more to other concerns (fiscally related) than active litigation. But it still gives more time to get the cases through to adjudication.

Bait trapping is continuing at the Caliente Complex as BLM continues to “zero out” the area. Little Book Cliffs in Colorado is set to be the last helicopter drive trap of 2024. See new 2024 schedule HERE. 

Many of you are asking us “why” the change in schedule. It is not that unusual for BLM to change roundup schedules with little notice.

In our opinion, after nearly two decades of analyzing the system, we believe the reason for the change holds two items at the core: 1. The fiscal year is ending and BLM took a bigger bite out of the budget than they thought (even though they rushed every single operation to early completion this year). 2. How to juggle the space and budget with logistics of holding and transport. 

We think that BLM is assessing how much of the 2024 allocation they have spent and have determined that they need to wait for 2025 funding to be released to them in October.

BLM still has about 10,000 open slots in processing (short-term holding) facilities throughout the West.

Space in holding is not an immediate concern for BLM but one that has to be looked at in context of the new fiscal year fall/winter roundup schedule and the end of fiscal year accounting.

Not only has BLM continued to shatter historic removal numbers (in July of 2024 alone, BLM removed more wild horses and burros than in all of 2023, 2014, 2015…), BLM has been amping up the online corrals (loading them with hundreds of horses and burros), onsite adoption events and the sales program. This has created a transportation logjam. 

Funding, space and transportation. Those are logical reasons most likely behind the change in schedule. 

The 2025 schedule begins October 1. We will have an update soon on the last leg of the “Path Forward” boondoggle soon.

No shade in the blistering heat

Our team continues to track and monitor wild horses and burros as they are captured and trucked into the care of BLM holding facilities. The average death rate is 1 in 9 from capture through six-months in BLM care.

BLM is funneling a record number of animals through the adoption incentive and sales program with little oversight to clear pens for more. Note: Did you know BLM broke the record last year for the number of burros shuffled entirely unseen from capture to sale? These burros went silently through the sales program as populations in the wild are pushed to less than 3,000 nationwide along with wild horses the BLM hopes we all forget ever existed.

Invisible and (Un)Forgotten (Marie Milliman, WHE volunteer)

The title of this short essay is in recognition of the Invisible and (Un)Forgotten. Acknowledging and reporting their existence and plight is not just a call to action but a necessity. It empowers us to make a difference and underscores the importance of public awareness in addressing this issue.

Reporting on this issue can be painful. If you care, it hurts. One of the things BLM actually continues to argue in court is that advocates have no lasting harm from their actions. Not only do they wish the media would simply forget the suffering they cause to the horses and burros, they want to deny they hurt you and I as well.

BLM has been doing their best (particularly in Nevada) to hide any meaningful access to capture often making it abundantly clear that the “public observation location” was not chosen for safety, but to get you as far away as possible so they can forget you are even there all day. Once captured, wild horses and burros are being increasingly shuffled off to temporary holding corrals that BLM allows to be subcontracted out to the very permittee in the roundup zone and allows them to dictate “zero access.” Once captured, they are loaded onto stock trailers or semis; at times, they are offloaded from stock trailers onto semis near the trap site and shipped on rutted roads, sometimes for hours, to temporary holding. Randomly, WHE may catch a fleeting glimpse of the stock trailers speeding by, but the rest of the process will usually remain invisible.

The program of the unseen runs full steam into increasing use of off-limits holding corrals BLM is racing to increase. They are concealed within the BLM and private, primarily off-limits short-term and long-term holding facilities. They have now “graduated” into an even more remote and anonymous existence. What is the chance of being adopted by a sincere and capable guardian?

Once they are “processed” at the holding facilities, they are threatened with the possibility of the wildly unsuccessful and dangerous Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) or sale eligibility to go straight to who knows where. How many take the “ride” to an auction yard to be sold to the kill buyer so the immoral AIP recipients can double their money or the $25 bargain sale authority animal that they can flip for $1,000 or more?

While they languish in facilities with little to no shade or adequate protection from the elements, hazardous enclosures, filthy pens packed to be ripe for any type of infectious disease, and flooding, they live the opposite of a life that in no way resembles their natural habitat, nor is it humane. While the BLM rushes approval of more holding facilities to house the captives the quality of care at the facilities will only predictably worsen.

Marie in the background photographing the release of Spartacus at Skydog

While the triumph of the saves and successful adoptions is worthy of praise and relief, we can never forget those left behind.

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The excruciating experience of touring a BLM facility while they were moving horses that WHE know into pens slated to ship the next morning from CA to OK Off Range “Pastures” will torment me for the rest of my days. (Learn more about the Surprise Complex where Spartacus came from HERE)

IF they survive the 1,600-mile-long haul, will they survive the following days/weeks/months? The memory of their faces, soon to become Invisible and Forgotten, should stay in the minds of every advocate. Each time the name of a horse in a sanctuary or rescue is spoken, the site-specific battle of the herd they came from and the faces of those “disappeared” should spring to life again in the minds and hearts of advocacy.

The fate of those who remain wild does not end after celebrating they were not captured “that time.” Each wild one free remains in the gross on-range mismanagement of the BLM with the “expanding fertility control program,” loss of genetic viability, sex skewed with geriatric prevalence, reduced designated habitat, and the fragmentation and loss of habitat to profit-driven interests.

A nation and agency that permits this to remain “under the carpet” should be penitent while they have the power to improve the ending of this story.

Speak their stories every chance you can. Never forget the haunting Invisible  and never let them become the Forgotten.

Advocacy for our wild horses and burros is a multi-layered task. We are addressing the lack of on range management planning and transparency in the courts. We are also working hard to address ongoing issues with abuse in the courts to gain concise language to hold BLM accountable.

This week Congress is back in DC working on spending issues. We did an update on the budget debate last week HERE.

We do not expect a consolidated bill to pass for the full year but a series of resolutions to keep the government funded. Under the power of big lobby groups the language in the spending bill is expected to continue to be the same as previous years.

One of the glaring items (still) missing is funding for the creation of enforceable welfare rules. If BLM were to go through the process of create policy (Rulemaking) we would have, for the first time since the Act passed in 1971, concise rules that remove broad discretion (where it is up to BLM onsite to break the rules), enforceability and consequence to abuse.

We may all still have time to get a representative in the House or Senate to propose an amendment to the “Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Wild Horse and Burro budget” that sets aside funding for Rulemaking for an enforceable welfare policy.

The phone number for Congress is: (202) 224-3121. 

Call the number, tell the operator who your representative is (or where you live if you do not know) and you will be connected to an aide in the office. Ask to register your concerns and request.

Ask that an amendment to the funding bill for the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program be crafted to simply create a “line item for funding for Rulemaking to create an enforceable welfare policy.”

The word “rulemaking” is vitally important as it is the name of the process that opens a welfare policy to public comment and finalizes with enforceability. We need concise rules, enforceability through formal policy making and consequences. The way to get that is through Rulemaking. 

Our team is really busy. We are working on briefing for court cases, field work and more.

We will have updates for you shortly but wanted to address the questions about the “roundup schedule” and speak of the ones in holding right now paying a very high price for the broken system predominantly unseen.

Thank you for keeping WHE running for the wild. 

There are several ways you can support WHE from gift shopping to stock donations. Learn more HERE.