WHE’s Colette Kaluza wrote an OpEd just published in Capital Weekly. This publication is an important source for information on California state government, politics, and policy.

You need to click HERE to read the OpED.

Associated action item: If you have a moment can you go to BLM ePlanning for the  Central Coast Field Office Oil and Gas Leasing and Development Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, Make one simple comment: ask that the document acknowledge wild horses in their analysis instead of treating them as if they are not there when major projects are designed.

Black Mountain wild horses

Below are some words for you, our WHE readers, from Colette about her OpEd. 

California’s climate leadership is on the line — and so are our last wild horses.

For years I’ve watched California celebrate its role as a climate leader while the wild horses that help define our public lands are quietly pushed toward disappearance. In my new opinion article for Capitol Weekly, “California can’t lead on climate while wild horses disappear,” I explain why those two stories cannot both be true. I wrote this piece because the decisions I see in the field, in NEPA documents, and in agency planning rooms tell a very different story than the one Californians are being sold.

Why I wrote this op-ed

In the op-ed, I describe how California’s claim to climate and conservation leadership is undermined when wild horses are reduced to “functional extinction” through routine agency decisions that treat them as a problem to be removed instead of a living part of the landscape. I draw on years of field observation and public records to show how federal land management here often moves ahead as if wild horses are incidental or expendable — whether in oil and gas planning, wildfire projects, or grazing allocations.

Most people assume state and federal agencies are protecting wild herds, but the reality is that only one herd fully within California still meets basic genetic viability thresholds, and federal “Appropriate Management Level” decisions leave room for barely more than a thousand wild horses statewide. Those numbers do not match the public’s understanding of what “protection” means.

I also wrote this piece because I am constantly asked how to move beyond reacting on social media into actions that actually are effective. The op-ed is one way to point people to a specific place where concern can be expressed in a way decision‑makers are required to acknowledge.

Black Mountain wild horses were ignored in the “fire fuels” plan and are completely ignored again for with Oil and Gas

How climate, wildfire, and NEPA connect

I wrote this op-ed to put wild horse policy where it belongs: inside the climate and wildfire conversation, not at the margins. When agencies narrow National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews or treat horses as an afterthought, they also overlook how removals, habitat loss, and fragmentation affect the resilience of western landscapes facing drought and fire.

In the article, I note that well‑managed wild horses can coexist with other wildlife and that, managed correctly, their presence can influence fire fuels and plant communities. I also remind readers that Congress explicitly recognized wild horses and burros as contributors to the “diversity of life forms within the Nation” in the 1971 Act, and that courts are beginning to demand a more honest accounting of how agency actions, including roundups, impact that diversity.

When climate plans talk about biodiversity in the abstract but leave out the very animals the public associates with these landscapes, they are not telling the whole truth.

Humane treatment and the law

Wild horses are not just a line item in a planning document; they are sentient animals whose treatment reflects our values. Humane handling in roundups, transport, holding facilities, and on-range management is supposed to be a baseline, not an optional extra. Yet over and over again, we see corners cut, standards treated as suggestions, and “emergency” labels used to rush actions with little oversight.

Wild Horse Education has carried, and continues to carry, multiple federal court cases around the country to defend humane treatment, wild horse herds, and the processes that govern them. Those cases challenge everything from how agencies describe conditions on the range, to how they handle animals during capture, to how they disclose and analyze their own impacts.

If a program is built around large, repeated removals, inadequate welfare safeguards, and a default assumption that horses are expendable, then both the science and the ethics are in question. A state that claims climate and conservation leadership should be insisting on better.

What I’m asking Americans to do before March 13

The Capitol Weekly op-ed includes one clear, time‑sensitive step with a deadline of Friday, March 13, 2026. I am asking Californians to read the article and submit comments on the Central Coast Field Office Oil and Gas Leasing and Development Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, asking federal agencies to acknowledge wild horses in their analysis instead of treating them as if they are not there when major projects are designed.

• California can’t lead on climate while wild horses disappear – Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly: The Newspaper of California State Government and Politics.

Where this fight goes next: 2027 budget battles

The March 13 Capitol Weekly call to action is one step in a much longer fight over how wild horses fit into California’s climate and conservation future. At the same time, Congress is already shaping the 2027 federal budget, which will decide whether the Wild Horse and Burro Program continues to fund large‑scale removals and controversial practices, or whether enforceable welfare protections, real Herd Management Area Plans, and anti‑slaughter safeguards are written into law.

Over the coming days, Wild Horse Education will release a 2027 Appropriations Guide with clear, step‑by‑step tools you can use to ask your House member and both senators to submit wild horse–focused programmatic and language requests for the Interior–Environment bill. These requests can direct funding toward welfare policy, on‑the‑ground planning, and closing slaughter loopholes, while cutting off spending for sterilization schemes that have never been scientifically justified.

If you decide to act on the Capitol Weekly op-ed now, I would encourage you to stay engaged as the budget process unfolds. Commenting in NEPA processes, pressing for humane treatment, and paying attention to how funding decisions are made are all parts of the same effort to ensure wild horses remain visible in both policy and practice.

Thank you.

If you have a moment can you go to BLM ePlanning for the  Central Coast Field Office Oil and Gas Leasing and Development Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, Make one simple comment: ask that the document acknowledge wild horses in their analysis instead of treating them as if they are not there when major projects are designed.

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.