The hearing for the Preliminary Injunction for Devil’s Garden was yesterday.

We are awaiting a full Order from the court, but know many of you are eager for an update.

Post hearing update: 

The roundup will now end on Monday (Tuesday the latest) according to USFS attorneys, about 100 shy of the target goal of 350. 

The Judge has asked for the raw data to be produced within two days of the completion of the census (scheduled mid-October; the USFS lawyers said the flyover would not be impacted by any shutdown). USFS attorneys objected and only wanted to produce the data after “data analysis” was done (the add and pad numbers we usually get) and needed more time. The Judge said they could provide a supplemental brief to include their analysis at a later date, but he wanted the raw data immediately. 

We believe the Judge sees the remedy as a release of wild horses back into the Garden. It has been confirmed that the release will take place after the census, but we do not know what that will look like yet. 

We are eagerly awaiting the Order of the Court on the Preliminary Injunction and will update you as soon as we have one. 

The Judge is continuing to state that we have a high likelihood on the success of the Merits of this case (meaning that when full briefing on the entire case is completed, we will likely prevail in showing that the authority and parameters of this operation were not legally set).

We wish he would have shut this down, now. Even though the daily capture numbers are low, every run has the potential for catastrophic injury, illness and death. The damage is permanent and cannot be undone.

We are also amending the complaint to include the 2025 plan that USFS completed after the roundup was underway. (Note: Courts have already ruled that federal agencies cannot “post-date” a NEPA review if they created a situation where they did not have the authority to do a removal).

Beyond showing that they never established legal authority to complete this roundup, we have further demonstrated to the court that both the AML (the number of horses allowed on the range) was never actually analyzed and the changing numbers in the census (there have been 4 different estimates post-operation) , no environmental analysis, USFS has not demonstrated “overpopulation.”

The idea that this herd will somehow explode in numbers post-roundup is simply not true; the herd is on the path of disappearing. USFS has inflated and repeatedly padded numbers with foaling rates (15%-20%) never established in fact, each roundup shows dropping foal captures (either foaling rate is only 7% or predation is causing a lack of survival). But USFS has never looked at these facts at all… and plans to add the hard-hitting fertility control drug GonaCon that causes 4-10 year sterility on mares (where the drug will likely last longer than the natural life-span of a wild horse) and even on stallions (causing permanent sterility). If there is an increase in predation causing the low foaling rate, prey will switch either to cattle or adult horses. If the low birth rate is because the population of wild horses is already in collapse (foal rates drop as populations collapse), USFS is simply accelerating the process.

We have asked the court not to allow GonaCon as it was not approved for use prior to this operation and will threaten the survival of this herd.

Our team remains onsite at the Garden. 

We will update you as we know more. 

We hope all of these wild ones get to go home. 

We are hopeful that many of them will. 

All of our work is only possible because of your support. 

Thank you for keeping WHE running for our wild ones!