Wild horse roundups are about a critical moment in the lives of wild horses and burros — and about our right to see what is happening, so the public can identify problems, weigh the facts, and speak from accurate information.

“What We Can’t See Can Hurt Them”

Today, BLM is again conducting large‑scale bait‑trap operations during foaling season, while restricting independent observers from viewing trapping, loading, and transport at critical moments. Pregnant mares and newborn foals can still be injured or killed during capture and handling, but when observers are pushed miles away or barred entirely, the public loses its ability to assess those risks and demand better practices.

Our volunteer has laid this crisis out in a powerful new OpEd, “What we can’t see can hurt them: Wild horses, secret roundups, and the right to know,” explaining how wild horse operations have become a test case for the First Amendment in the field. The piece traces how Leigh v. Salazar and later rulings like Courthouse News Service and Index Newspapers v. City of Portland have been built on to require timely, meaningful access—and how recent BLM choices represent a deliberate slide back into secrecy.

Click here to read the OpEd published today by Wild Horse Education volunteer Colette Kaluza and share it with your networks: “What we can’t see can hurt them.”

Our early work helped bring the reality of roundups to the public daily.

From One Reporter’s Lens to a Movement

Wild Horse Education’s founder, Laura Leigh, came West as a photojournalist to document wild horses, and the resistance she met from federal land managers turned her from reporter to plaintiff. She refused “exclusive access” deals that would have left the public behind and instead spent years in court to secure daily observation rights for everyone, not just one camera.

Those cases did more than open trap sites; they created precedent now cited in civil rights and press‑freedom cases nationwide. The Silver King First Amendment case and subsequent Ninth Circuit rulings established that the government must justify restrictions on access with a compelling interest and narrowly tailored limits, not vague claims of convenience or discomfort with scrutiny.

Beyond wild horses, Leigh v. Salazar has become a touchstone for press freedom far outside the range. Courts and advocates now cite the case for the basic principle that the free press is “the guardian of the public interest,” and that journalists must be able to see what government officials are doing in real time. In Index Newspapers v. U.S. Marshals, for example, a federal court in Oregon relied on Leigh to protect reporters and legal observers covering protests in Portland, holding that the same First Amendment access test used in the wild horse roundup context applies when journalists document law enforcement on city streets.

Above: Exclusive video captured at a roundup spurred the creation of the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act and when it was first introduced included a section devoted to this instance in language proposed to amend the law.

Secrecy, Welfare, and the Public’s Right to Know

You cannot create change if you cannot see what needs to be changed. Put “welfare issues” in a fish bowl so everyone can see what is happening. Back then BLM had no welfare standards at all. This work was key to gaining the ground we have today… ground that sits only two steps from going from no standards to achieving the long sought after goal of enforceable welfare rules.

Transparency is not a separate issue from welfare; it is the precondition for enforcing humane standards. When BLM hides draft or an asserted “permanent” Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) standard, skips promised assessments, or restricts viewing at traps and holding, it becomes impossible for the public to verify whether policies actually prevent preventable injuries, illness, and death.

Investigations have already exposed bulk sales to kill buyers and loopholes in “four‑horse” limits, along with roundups where foals were run to injury behind the curtain of limited access.

That is why our legal work has linked First Amendment claims to specific operations and brought victories at Tuscarora/Owyhee and Triple B to stopping spay‑experiments on our wild ones.

Seeing our wild horses and burros with our own eyes is the first act of truth‑telling; everything else flows from that.

When we stand at the fence line, read the documents, and witness what is happening—not what we are told is happening—we become impossible to pacify with press releases and talking points.

Real change has never come from being spoon‑fed a narrative designed to preserve the status quo, it comes from people who have seen enough to say “no more” and can back it up with facts.

Keeping access to these animals, and to every scrap of information about how they are treated, at the center of this fight is how we move from passive consumers of agency spin to active guardians of our public lands and the lives that depend on them.

First we insist on seeing clearly, and then we fight—every day—for what we know is true.

Thank you for keeping WHE on the frontline in this fight to protect and preserve our precious wild ones. 

Please read and share the new OpEd and keep seeking and speaking the truth. 

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. 

Thank you for standing with us as we fight for Freedom, Mercy and Justice.