February on the range is supposed to mark the slow turning of winter toward spring, a time of new life, not the sound of helicopters driving heavily pregnant mares and fragile foals into trap.

Yet year after year, as foaling season begins on many ranges, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rushes to squeeze in last‑minute removals before the calendar flips to March— when helicopter use is prohibited— and then insists that a paper prohibition on flying helicopters during foaling season fulfills its duty of humane care.

February roundups as foaling begins

On the final week of February, BLM wrapped its winter 2026 Antelope “emergency” roundup after capturing 344 wild horses and killing 6 in just three days. The agency framed the operation as a response to horses “outside” the Antelope and Moriah areas, and as a feed‑driven emergency, even while horses showed solid body condition and livestock turnout loomed. With less than 36 hours’ notice, helicopters were back in the air with only a week left in what BLM calls “helicopter season,” the period that is supposed to end before foaling season to reduce the risk to late‑term mares and newborn foals.

But BLM has never created herd‑specific, data‑based foaling season determinations for each Herd Management Area (HMA). Instead, the agency leans on a generic calendar cutoff at the end of February and vague internal assumptions that all foals are magically “a year old” after January 1, even if they were born weeks before. During the Owyhee roundup that immediately preceded Antelope, BLM even claimed there were “no foals,” reclassifying obviously young animals as yearlings to avoid acknowledging the increased risk. Without clear, enforceable foaling season designations at the HMA planning level, the supposed prohibition on helicopters during foaling season becomes a hollow talking point, not a meaningful welfare safeguard.

Decades of documenting foaling‑related harm

Wild Horse Education (WHE) has spent nearly two decades documenting the realities BLM’s paperwork refuses to acknowledge: increased spontaneous abortions, premature births, and deaths from foaling complications linked to aggressive winter and early‑spring roundups. On the ground, we have seen heavily pregnant mares pushed over rough terrain, foals run to collapse, and newborns left behind on the range or dying in holding, while official reports recast them as “yearlings,” “pre‑existing conditions,” or “non‑gather related.”

During the recent Antelope operation, BLM again recorded deaths as if they were simply unfortunate events disconnected from the choices that put these horses at risk. A yearling’s neck fractured at the trap, and adult horses with severe injuries or poor condition were euthanized, yet the agency’s language scrubbed any acknowledgment that the helicopter chase was the precipitating factor. At other recent operations like East Pershing, official numbers show dozens of horses dying in the weeks after capture—65 deaths during and immediately after the roundup, and 103 deaths associated with the facility over the course of the operation—without any meaningful public accounting or corrective welfare action.

The pattern is painfully familiar: when horses die, BLM labels them as animals with “something wrong”—blindness, arthritis, bad feet, “lax tendons”—rather than as victims of avoidable stress and mismanagement. When foals die from colic or collapse, or when late‑term mares suffer complications, the agency treats these outcomes as background noise of the program, not as evidence that its timing and methods are fundamentally flawed.

The story of Chance—a foal whose brief life began and ended in the shadow of a helicopter at Antelope—remains one of the most heartbreaking illustrations of what happens when early‑year roundups collide with foaling season. During another Antelope roundup that captured nearly 1,400 wild horses, a very pregnant mare was run hard by helicopter. She gave birth too soon, or under conditions too stressful, and her foal—later named Chance—was born compromised and did not survive.

The truth is that his story is not unique, it was simply one documented by someone who cared outside the bureaucracy.

From Chance’s death over a decade ago, and all of those from then until now that suffered the same fate, to the foals collapsed at East Pershing and Owyhee, the through‑line is not bad luck; it is policy and practice. The absence of herd‑specific foaling season protections, the push to maximize winter helicopter days, and the refusal to classify foaling‑related injuries as gather‑related all work together to erase the lives lost from the public record.

Below: Do you remember Chance, the Antelope foal that had a chance but BLM would not release him to private care? He was simply labelled as “failure to thrive” as if somehow it was his “failure” and not the failure of the humans involved that created the situation. 

Born on March 2, to a mare that had been run at the Antelope Complex on February 27, he simply lay in the cold slippery ground as BLM sprayed water on him for “dust control.” Perhaps premature, BLM would not release him into private care. The cards were stacked against him.

No welfare rules, a draft and a promise broken

Between the 2011 Antelope roundup and today, WHE has repeatedly gone to court to force BLM to confront inhumane conduct. Our litigation shut down Triple B in 2011 over abuse—the first time a federal court halted a BLM wild horse operation for inhumane handling—and subsequent Owyhee cases brought restraining orders and explicit court language on humane treatment and the lack of a real welfare policy.

In response, BLM promised to develop enforceable welfare standards, even drafting rules that required internal and public review, but instead poured millions into a “Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program” (CAWP) that was never fully reviewed, implemented, or opened to public comment. Internal records later showed CAWP standards were never meaningfully evaluated, the assessment tool was quietly abandoned, and yet leadership continued telling Congress and the courts that the program was being “formalized.”

Today, BLM promotes a CAWP team built to endorse, not enforce; during the recent Antelope Complex case, staff could not even agree on what non‑compliance would look like, revealing a program that functions as a public‑relations shield rather than a genuine welfare safeguard.

Born 3 days after mom was captured on February 26, Antelope Complex. Yes, that is an umbilical cord. The foal had to rise and run as BLM sorted her out of the “mare pen.”

Why “foaling season” is meaningless without enforceable rules

BLM’s own leaders have acknowledged, in moments of candor, that they know foaling season exists and that they know helicopter use during that period is prohibited.

But instead of embedding herd‑specific foaling season determinations in Herd Management Area Plans (HMAPs)—the proper planning documents that must be built through analysis and public participation—the agency sidesteps HMAPs and relies on short‑term gather plans and “emergency” declarations.

This sleight of hand has real consequences:

• Foaling seasons remain undefined or generic for most HMAs, despite decades of range data and field observation.

• Helicopter operations are crammed into late winter and early spring, precisely when late‑term mares and newborn foals are most vulnerable.

• Deaths and injuries of foals and mares are systematically downplayed or recoded as pre‑existing problems, obscuring the connection to gather timing and methods.

• CAWP is invoked as proof of “humane management,” even though its standards were never subject to public review, never formally finalized as enforceable regulations, and are inconsistently applied in the field.​

Without enforceable welfare rules—including clear foaling season protections tied to range‑specific data—the phrase “no helicopters during foaling season” is little more than a line in a press release. Chance’s death, the foals who collapsed at East Pershing, newborns potentially left on the range and the newborns dying quietly in holding all testify to the gap between BLM’s rhetoric and reality.

February roundup, East Pershing, brand new babies were stampeded into trap. This one seen on the side of the road alone as our team member was driving to trap.

While we continue to battle it out in a courtroom, Congress could take steps to create the change needed and stop the necessity for repetitive litigation.

Right now, as lawmakers shape recommendations for the FY 2027 Interior Appropriations bill, you can help push for a specific line item directing and funding BLM to complete, formalize, and implement binding CAWP regulations—covering gathers, transport, and all holding facilities—with real timelines, reporting requirements, and independent oversight. WHE has created an action tool that lets you send a letter directly to your Representatives, urging them to require enforceable welfare standards, restore the CAWP assessment tool, and ensure that foaling season protections are grounded in science, not spin.​

Learn more about the long‑denied welfare rule review here: “Don’t Forget Me (Take Action: Welfare Rules).”

You can send a letter directly to your representatives… just click here. 

Nothing points to the fact that the entire program completely disregards the welfare of wild horses and burros more than the lengths they will go to NOT to follow the legal steps to review and finalize a welfare policy.

From how wild horses and burros are managed on the range, even fertility control, is governed by a unenforceable rules. It is not just during capture or into holding where the lack of welfare rules has devastating consequences… it is in every aspect of the program.

“We care about the horses” coming from a government employee is simply hot air and more and more offensive every time they say those hollow words.

Every mile we travel to cover roundups or assess a herd, every court case we bring, every win, every action we take is only possible because of your support.