Our teams have their heads down this week dealing with work that spans range to courtroom and Congress. These are very tense times in “wild horse and burro country.”

A fast look at things happening this week:

Livestock out in the dry pond area, Devils Garden

Devils Garden

While Forest Service is dealing with Objections to the new Forest plan for wild horses, they are moving forward under the 2013 plan with one last roundup to the Devils Garden herd. The 2013 plan faced massive formal objections and litigation that resulted in a ruling that required further analysis. Instead of creating a new plan, USFS simply amended language to include an incomplete analysis in the 2024 plan. Objections have been filed by several people as the future of the herd hangs by a thread.

The current operation will target around 500 wild horses near Alturas, California. If you want to see the roundup observation is limited to 6 people a day and can be cancelled with no notice (USFS is not BLM and no access litigation has occurred as has for BLM). From USFS: To make viewing reservations please email sm.fs.modoc_info@usda.gov and include your name, phone number, requested viewing dates, and the number of viewers in your party. If you are unable to email reservation requests, please call (530) 233-8738

If you want to adopt or buy a Devils Garden horse outright, absurdly, USFS directs you to a Facebook page. 

Carter, Buckhorn, Coppersmith (BLM California)

BLM has an active Gather Environmental Assessment (EA) out for these 3 geographically distinct areas. “Gather and Population Control Plan” is one of the names BLM uses for “Gather-EA.”

Without ever taking on the task of crafting an actual Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP), that BLM knows full well is desperately needed to address known historic flaws, BLM has moved to a Gather-EA to facilitate a removal (that they want to add to the 2025 gather schedule). From document describing the need: The Bureau of Land Management, Applegate Field Office (BLM) is proposing to immediately gather and remove excess wild horses and burros from within and outside the Carter Reservoir, Buckhorn, and Coppersmith Herd Management Areas.

The “Gather-EA” may contain a lot of information and looks impressive at 242 pages, but this is nothing more than a gather EA and will consider all comments outside that scope irrelevant. (Example: Even though it looks like it addresses waters and livestock, comments on water improvements or changes in livestock use are not within the scope of “gather.” BLM knows they need to do an HMAP but have shortchanged the public and the wild ones once more. (Perhaps due to pressure from livestock forcing advocacy to file litigation so they can blame the advocate community?)

The HMAs lie in northwestern Nevada mostly in Washoe County, Nevada with small portions in Modoc and Lassen County, California. These HMAs are managed by BLM California.

We will have sample comments out soon.

If you want to see the project page you can click HERE.  Comments are due 11/20.

North Lander

The North Lander roundup this summer broke many hearts as wild horses were removed from the range in a large-scale roundup. Advocates knew BLM was likely removing below AML and a post roundup census confirmed.

The numbers on the planned release keep shrinking as BLM says (post census) they found additional horses. The number to be released in the Rock Creek HMA has dropped by 10. 

From BLM: “We will release 8 horses into the Dishpan Butte HMA and 8 horses into the Rock Creek Mountain HMA on October 31.” If you want to see the release in Wyoming contact sbeckwith@blm.gov

At this time we do not know when the larger releases at Conant Creek and Muskrat will take place. After these releases we are informed BLM will begin the adoption/sale events early in 2025.

Triple B

Antelope Complex and Triple B Complex

The battle continues under the largest roundup plan in the country at the Antelope Complex and Triple B Complex.

BLM continues to lump two of the largest distinct complexes of Herd Management Areas (HMA) into one thing that covers square acreage larger than the sates of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. The Antelope Complex has an AML range of 427-789 wild horses and the Triple B Complex has an AML range of 472-889. The combined project area (Antelope and Triple B Complexes) has an AML range of 899-1,678. That might sound like a lot, but think about the sheer size of this area and the numbers are absolutely paltry compared to the sheer volume of domestic livestock that outnumbers horses in some HMAs by 50-1.

Scoping for the (likely) illegal plan to lump them together in a single HMAP is underway. Comments are due November 14.

We have a letter we are sending to BLM this week asking that they extend the comment period out to 60 days due to the sheer size of the scoping and request that they dio one HMAP for each complex. You can find the explanation and letter HERE.

Our team is also continuing the legal battle for these herds in the active lawsuit this week.

We will have sample comments for you soon if BLM does not extend the comment period for an area already the subject of active litigation.

Capture during heat event and dangerous air quality from wildfire smoke, Blue Wing, 2024.

Welfare Policy

As the winter roundup season begins, please take action against abuse directly.

Creating an enforceable welfare policy should be the easiest thing for BLM to fix. But BLM has dug in their heels and used millions of dollars to create a program that simply endorses blatantly unacceptable conduct. The endorse not enforce stance of BLM was on full display at Blue Wing when they called conduct “excellent” as the roundup garnered worldwide attention over blatant abuse.

If you want to learn more about the long fight to simply gain an enforceable welfare policy (and a sample script for you to use to make a call to your lawmakers) click HERE.

Our team is working hard on many fronts this week. Please be patient as we juggle urgent tasks and do not have a lot of time to answer emails and social media messaging apps.

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.