Above: FY2025 roundups cut down to 5 minutes.
The 2025 fiscal year ended October 1. The government shutdown began that day and the regular fall/winter roundup schedule for fiscal year (FY) 2026 has not been announced. That does not mean roundups are not happening. Over 500 burros are being rounded up right now and ongoing issues in holding continue, including issues with infectious diseases like Strangles.
Over 8,300 wild horses and burros were captured in FY2025. The average death rate is 12% and can rise to as high as 22% from trap into holding facilities (first 6 months of captivity). If you do the math, that means that nearly 1000 died from capture. The death rate (according to BLM) is nominal on range accounting for less than 1% of the population. Capture is the number one cause of death for wild horses and burros.
Most injuries, illnesses and deaths are preventable. However, the BLM simply did not review draft standards, put them out for public comment and finalize an actual enforceable policy. Instead, they simply typed the word permanent on the draft and built a taxpayer funded team that creates documents to protect ongoing abuses from court sanctions.
That paragraph is not rhetoric, it has been proven in documents obtained through multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation to obtain documents.
Canyonlands burros (UT) 2025
Simply taking steps to make parameters of the existing policy align with current veterinary standards (including Heat and Air Quality Indexes), making guidelines mandatory and not “can be overridden through discretion” of the person in charge, never using helicopter for burros, could begin to make death rates drop.
Note: Burros do not handle the stress of helicopter capture well and suffer from capture myopathy related deaths instantly and for as long as a year after capture. 25% of the burros captured at Canyonlands died from “unknown illness” and additional deaths were recorded. Helicopters should never be used with burros.
There was no citation to any member of the gather crew or BLM personnel for moving so fast at Twin Peaks they even forgot to secure trailer doors before pulling out from the trap sight.
In testimony in our ongoing litigation, BLM employees even contradict each other when it comes to identifying what “non-compliance” with the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAW) standards are. One employee actually testified that you would need to violate every standard to be considered non-compliant. (CAWP is the draft BLM created after years of our litigation demonstrating they had no welfare standard at all. We are the only organization to ever walk abuse into a courtroom.)
Simply moving traps from livestock grazing allotment to allotment, instead of running horses through gates, would cut down on injuries.
To put an end to preventable injury and death, stop the repetitive litigation, BLM could simply complete the steps to creating a real policy (our for public comment and formalization) on their own. The Secretary of Interior could just send a memo to do it, he has that discretion. But they never do.
Congress could simply add the language into the spending bill (Appropriations): Funding to be used to formalize a welfare policy through the public comment and review.
When Congress gets back in real session… make it a point to give them a call.
Our team remembers a time where there was no daily access to roundups… we had to litigate up and down the court system for 6-years to win it for everyone. Our founder was actually offered red-carpet access (that she has never had to this day) to trap, but she would have had to leave the others behind. For her the First Amendment was not something to be given to one and others denied a Constitutional Right… so she chose to fight.
We take our work to report to the public from roundups very seriously. The public has a right to view and report and make up their own minds and not just read the santized view of those performing the roundup.
FY2025 (Oct. 2024 – Sept. 2025)
Justice. Mercy. Freedom.
Thank you for keeping WHE running for our wild ones!
Categories: Wild Horse Education
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