Together, we have built a movement toward creating real reform in 2025. 

This year, Wild Horse Education forced the truth into the open. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has failed to create real management plans and completely dropped the ball when it comes to the humane practices for wild horses and burros and formalizing welfare standards.

It is not rhetoric. For decades BLM has simply removed wild horses and and burros based on agreements made with livestock permittees; rolled those agreements into Land Use Plans and called it “analysis.” They created a faltering system of “remove and stockpile” while protecting loopholes that allow them to funnel out wild horses and burros even if it means unloading them into the hands of those that sell them into the slaughter pipeline. 

Through years of Freedom of Information Act work — and a new lawsuit to obtain records the agency fought to hide — internal BLM emails finally confirmed what our field documentation has shown for more than a decade: there is still no real, enforceable Comprehensive Animal Welfare Policy (CAWP) to protect wild horses and burros at roundups, in holding, or during transport. Instead, BLM quietly labeled a draft as “permanent policy” while preventable injuries, suffering, and deaths continued.

We won another Court Order proving BLM has failed to create real management plans for decades in the Stone Cabin/Saulsbury lawsuit. When a livestock permittee sued to force a mass removal at Stone Cabin/Saulsbury, WHE went to court. The permittee lost his bid to compel the roundup, and the court found BLM had illegally withheld creating an HMAP for Saulsbury—but stopped short of enforcing the existing HMAP for Stone Cabin, a herd where Velma Johnston herself helped shape early negotiations. WHE has now taken the case to the Ninth Circuit to secure real accountability to plans that protect this historic herd and set precedent for others.

Salt Wells, Wyoming

After winning a precedent‑setting case at the Pancake Complex that struck down a roundup plan and exposed BLM’s “nothing short of egregious” decades‑long failure to complete a Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP), WHE filed a new lawsuit to hold the agency accountable for its continued mismanagement of the Pancake Complex.

We filed a Protest against a pipeline that would impact 7 Herd Management Areas (HMAs) including the Triple B HMA that is already under assault from expanding mining and the impact to sage grouse and other wildlife would be devastating. That plan has been remanded back to BLM and they cannot move forward until they analyze other routes!

In federal court, WHE and partners are challenging a plan that would gut the genetically unique Carter Reservoir herd to as few as 25 horses, while driving Buckhorn to 59 and Coppersmith to 50—numbers that risk “genetic bankruptcy” when combined with long‑lasting fertility control. This case asks the court to require the analysis BLM has never done on boundaries, numbers, and viable herds, instead of managing by convenience and outdated assumptions…. and all of it based in agreements with zero data or science.

We are also carrying cases into 2026 to protect Devil’s Garden wild horses from disappearing, to stop the Tassi-Gold burros from paying the price for livestock, defend wild horse habitat from expanding industry and so much more.

These critical lawsuits could reshape how wild horses are managed across the West.

The fight to stop unnecessary suffering and death continues to be at the top of our list. With the new information in hand, we are planning a multi-prong approach to gaining the long overdue reviews and public participation toward creating real welfare rules. You still have time to sign onto a letter we are sending to the Secretary of the Interior as a first step.

Our roundup team continues to be a source for in-depth reporting many of you have come to rely on. 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 sanitized view from those performing the roundup. In order to create change, we must first expose all that is wrong.

In 2025, WHE pushed back when the budget bill debate held the threat of killing healthy wild horses and burros or selling them without limits (slaughter). In this chaotic year, we also helped inform you of the process and standard timelines.

Over the last year (and for over a decade) we thank you for standing by our side as we push to create real reforms that fix the broken framework first before moving forward with more tragic political pandering that can cause more damage. We have stood at the frontline pushing real change… together.

Right now, your donation will:

• Keep observers in the field whenever helicopters fly.
• Power meaningful lawsuits into 2026.
• Help us gain real enforceable welfare rules. 
• Build lasting protections that safeguard wild herds for generations.

The wild ones cannot step into a courtroom or draft a legal brief. Yet they carry the evidence we track down for the lawsuits we bring—powered by the support you choose to give.

Thank you for standing with Wild Horse Education at the close of this difficult, pivotal year. Together, we can make sure that what came to light in 2025 and the lawsuits begun lead to real change in 2026—for every wild horse and burro captive or free on our public lands.

P.S. And just as these breakthroughs were emerging, our main Facebook page—with more than 150,000 followers—was targeted and hacked. We lost years of reach overnight—but we did not lose our voice. Supporters helped us launch a new official page, continue critical reporting on roundups and holding, and expand our use of email, website updates, and secure platforms so that no hack can silence this work again. If you use Facebook, please follow our new page.