Young foal driven into trap on the first day of the 2025 Devil’s Garden roundup
Editorial: Laura Leigh, my personal perspective
As we work on Devil’s Garden behind the scenes in our legal action and onsite where it appears the public First Amendment is meaningless, certain words come to mind:
fraud, in law, the deliberate misrepresentation of fact for the purpose of depriving someone of a valuable possession.
bait and switch, A “bait and switch” is an illegal sales tactic where a company advertises a product or service (the “bait”) to attract customers, but does not genuinely intend to sell it.
I have been tracking roundups for nearly 20 years. I have never experienced the blatant manipulation I am witnessing with how the United States Forest Service (USFS) is carrying out the current roundup.
If Forest Service were a private company, the law would be very clear: Announcing one thing to the public (bait) while you are already planning to “switch” to another to carry out a different and pre-determined outcome would be illegal… and criminally prosecuted. But USFS is a federal agency and we need to continue to battle this out in federal civil court.
Attention: If you commented on the USFS Devil’s Garden plan anytime between 2022 and the Protest period in 2024, but did not get any notification from USFS that they finalized the plan on September 11, 2025, drop us a note at: Laura@WildHorseEducation.org
In 2022, USFS began the process of creating a new management plan for Devil’s Garden as the old plan was legally questionable.
Published on their website (still) is the notice of intention of completion of that plan by January 2025.
The bait: On August 15, USFS announced a roundup and release would occur in 2 weeks at Devil’s Garden They cited the 2013 plan EA as giving them the authority to do the roundup.
After failing to truly establish “excess” in any scientific fashion (claiming so many horses were on the range that stallions would have had to give birth or even had twins since the roundup in fall 2024/winter 2025) and operating under a defunct EA, litigation was filed. The court stated we had a likelihood on success on proving that there was no actual legal authority to do this roundup (NEPA claim).
The switch: Claiming in court that they did not have personnel or funding to finalize the 2025 plan before doing a roundup, or even personnel that could facilitate observation limiting public access to only 3 days a week, miraculously they published the final 2025 plan EA. You can find the plan they approved on Sept 11, HERE.Once again you will see USFS claim that some (unofficial and non-court sanctioned) settlement with ranchers is the overarching metric for their plan.
What we have confirmed is that USFS already purchased GonCon to apply to any mare released, even though the plan they had announced gave them authority to do a roundup (the 2013 plan) did not approve the use of the drug that would create infertility for 4-10 years, primarily applied to mares over 10 and likely to last longer than their natural lifespan. They are actually claiming it is a hardship to the government now if the court rules in our favor because the vaccines will expire and they will lose money…. yeah, they say that.
What do you think? A or B?
A) So is the plan they just (magically) finalized an actual analysis of what is best for the range and horses?
B) Or did they finalize with a directive to create a predetermined outcome to satisfy the demands of the Farm Bureau to give to the court?
The answer is pretty obvious.
Another word comes to mind as I contemplate the betrayal to the resources and the public trust. A visit to the Meriam Webster dictionary finds that numerous definitions of the word apply:
corruption noun cor·rup·tion kə-ˈrəp-shən
-
- a: dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity
- b : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery) the corruption of government officials
- c : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
- d : decay, decomposition the corruption of a carcass
The fight continues. It seems the biggest challenge will be to stop USFS from deflecting, diverting, obfuscating… with the purpose of satisfying their desire to set the Devil’s Garden horses on the path of disappearing forever and giving the Farm Bureau what they wanted since the day the 1971 Act to protect horses and burros was passed.
First Amendment issues are still rampant at Devil’s Garden. We are not even being told which horses have died. They are not labelling updates by method (bait or helicopter) and obstructing basic attempts to report to the public every step of the way.
Obscenity is another word that comes to mind.
I just wanted to give you a quick update on the fight at Devil’s Garden and found myself needing to vent.
This roundup hurts. It hurts the horses. It hurts those that love them.
Onward.
They still have not fixed the error from 9/7 where somehow 3+1=11… and they have not posted numbers from yesterday even though they say today is a down day and they should have had plenty of time to update and fix the error.
We started a Patreon page as our Facebook page was hacked and we are still waiting for our property to be returned. Patreon subscriptions can provide is steady funding and a more intimate way to share behind-the-scenes team chat. As access is also a big issue at Devil’s Garden, we are going to do a video later of our team lead and observer onsite and post on Patreon so you can hear the discussion (as we work on information for court).
This week we are working on multiple lawsuits (including Devil’s Garden) and outreach to Congress to ensure the prohibitions against killing healthy wild horses and burros or selling them without limits (slaughter) is maintained in the budget bill.
Categories: Wild Horse Education
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