As the fiscal year 2025 roundup schedule begins members of numerous media outlets have been reaching out to WHE. In the past we have helped people making films, writing books and journalists covering the historic mess that is the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program. 

Our founder Laura Leigh has been having several chats with members of media answering questions. Yesterday, she had one such chat with Taylor Burke of KOLO 8 News. Leigh said she thought she was simply helping Burke with background information for future stories explaining the numerous layers of the program, recent victories in the courtroom, current litigation and even the fact that BLM never completed work to create an enforceable welfare policy. 

Yesterday, to Leigh’s surprise, the chat was both for background and the interview was edited and aired. (You can watch the broadcast HERE)

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – As the BLM calls for more roundups, one group is working towards not only transparency in the wake of consistent abuse, but a congress mandated enforceable plan.

Laura Leigh, the President of Wild Horse Education, highlights where the Bureau of Land Management is lacking when it comes to safe horse and burro roundups. Through her non profit, she advocates for federally protected wild horses on public lands. She says they work in all states, but Nevada has more wild horses than all the states combined, so Nevada, has become home.

“Numbers are being placed before safety, Leigh says. Instead of doing Management Plans, the BLM skipped those and started doing Gather EA’s calling them Environmental Assessments, instead of Gather Environmental Assessments, giving people the impression that they’ve evaluated the environment.”

Leigh explains that the Gather EA’s are misleading as they focus on the numbers of horses gathered, not the after effects on the land.

“They’ve already removed 12,000 horses out of this area and have never released any data showing that the removal of 12,000 horses is moving them towards a thriving natural ecological balance. They also haven’t released data showing how many horses are left in each Heard Management Area out there. So where have you gotten in your Appropriate Management Level and where haven’t you?” asks Leigh.

The Appropriate Management Level (AML) for wild horses and burros in Nevada is 12,811. The BLM uses the this to determine how many wild horses and burros can coexist with other resources on public lands. When the population exceeds the AML, the BLM removes excess animals through gathers. However, Leigh says there’s no scientific proof for how the BLM came to that number. Not producing data is something Leigh has seen over and over with the BLM. She has now become the first and only person to litigate the BLM for abuse.

“We’ve won multiple cases,“ said Leigh. “This was before the BLM had their Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program. So it took litigation just to get them to create that. But then BLM put the breaks on, and never put the draft policy out for public comment to finalize it as enforceable.”

With no other agency holding the BLM accountable, Leigh fears more abuse is to come. Just this August, Kolo 8 reported on a BLM contractor caught kicking a horse in the face. Just over a month later, we saw horses falling out of a trailer during the Twin Peaks roundup.

The BLM issued a statement that said:

“On Oct. 3 during the Twin Peaks Wild Horse gather, nine captured wild horses fell from a contractor’s slowly moving trailer as it was transporting the animals from the capture site to the temporary holding corrals. The horses got to their feet and moved off into the rangelands. The BLM staff did not note any significant injury and is monitoring the horses. The BLM staff on site determined that the trailer gate had not been properly secured. The BLM is working with the contractors to ensure all safety and animal welfare protocols are being followed.”

“The ‘monitoring’ was the pilot keeping an eye out that day to see if he could see the horses, and they looked fine to the pilot. That was the extent. They couldn’t even monitor to make sure the gate on the trailer was closed,” Leigh said.

Leigh adds that if the BLM wasn’t working so fast to get the job done, that incident wouldn’t have happened.

“The round up was approved to last 31 days. They completed the round up of 940 horses in 11 days. So they estimated the time to capture that many horses as three times that, and they just rushed,” explained Leigh.

Abuse isn’t the only problem, according to Leigh. She says the horses are removed for other interests as well.

Lily is now the babysitter for her band

“In the Triple B area, where they haven’t done a Heard Management Area Plan, they’ve approved a mine. It’s the Juniper Project, the Bald Mountain Mine expansion, and its eating up 30% of the territory designated for horse use with no mitigation for habitat loss,” said Leigh. “At some point we have to say no to more livestock and mining.”

Until the BLM has an enforceable management plan, Leigh plans to keep litigating the BLM for real change.

“They try to make range management look complicated, and they try to make the system of holding look complicated. But when we’re talking about a Comprehensible Welfare Policy that clearly states things like; don’t run them through barbed wire, and not hitting them with a helicopter, why can’t we make that an enforceable rule? To me, if they wont create an enforceable Welfare Policy that speaks volumes on the whole program, because that should be the simplest thing. Whether you want horses on the range or not, you shouldn’t condone abuse,” said Leigh.

Many of you that have “followed wild horses and burros” have watched news stories often relegate these issues into the same stories for decades: too many horses (without data), poor livestock impacted by horses and the BLM simply trying to do their best caught in the middle.”

The real stories are much deeper than that.

We are encouraged that todays media cares enough to try to push a bit deeper… even if the nightly news has only a few minutes.

Our team is working hard in field, at the table and in the courts this month.

By request we have relaunched the “Freedom and Justice” t-shirt and, by request, we added the preamble to the 1971 Act to the back. You can order a shirt by clicking here and, if you want to add a donation to support our work you can during checkout.  

If you would like to make a direct contribution to help us continue to be in the field and pay the bills to keep pushing hard in the courtroom, we are grateful for your support. 

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.