SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Wild Horse Education has filed its opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Case No. 25‑5679), advancing its case after mediation efforts with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to produce any commitment to lawful, science‑based management for Nevada’s historic Stone Cabin and Saulsbury wild horse herds.

The appeal challenges BLM’s approval of a ten‑year gather plan that would permanently reduce the Stone Cabin herd to as few as 218 horses and the Saulsbury herd to as few as 24, potentially removing more than 1,000 wild horses from over 543,000 acres of public lands.

Wild Horse Education argues that these removals were authorized despite BLM’s failure to comply with existing mandatory Herd Management Area Plans (HMAPs), which are binding components of the agency’s wild horse management framework.

In earlier district court proceedings, the court held that BLM unlawfully delayed development of a new HMAP for Saulsbury but declined to require compliance with the existing 1983 Stone Cabin HMAP. The appeal asks the Ninth Circuit to confirm that once an HMAP exists, BLM may not disregard its terms when implementing major management actions such as multi‑year gather plans.

The 1983 Stone Cabin HMAP requires BLM to inventory the herd, allocate actions across five identified sub‑units, maintain free‑roaming behavior, develop additional water sources, and conduct range‑wide studies—steps that were omitted from decades of removal plans and entirely ignored in the challenged BLM 2023 gather plan. Instead, the agency relied on limited, complex‑wide data and ad hoc utilization checks, a practice Wild Horse Education contends violates both 43 C.F.R. 4710.4 and BLM’s own guidance that management must be tied to HMAP objectives.

During court‑supervised mediation, Wild Horse Education and Laura Leigh proposed that BLM adopt interim, on‑the‑ground management constraints—an approach the agency regularly uses with livestock operators—while it updated the Stone Cabin/Saulsbury HMAP. BLM declined to make any such commitments, and mediation was closed without agreement, sending the case forward on the merits.

Because Ninth Circuit precedents govern public land management across much of the West, a ruling in this case could clarify that HMAPs are enforceable obligations rather than discretionary guidance, strengthening accountability and science‑based planning for wild horse herds throughout BLM’s jurisdiction.

“BLM itself has told Congress that Herd Management Area Plans are foundational documents for managing wild horses on public lands, yet in court it claims its gather plans don’t have to follow those plans at all,” said Laura Leigh, President of Wild Horse Education. “A gather is an action plan, and action plans are supposed to comply with every existing land‑use plan, including the herd‑specific HMAP. If BLM can simply ignore the very management plans they seem to only point to when it (BLM) wants funding, then wild horses are left with no real protections—just paper promises while the agency does whatever it wants on the ground.”

“The law is clear about the sequence of planning and action: you adopt the plan first, then you design all actions to comply with it—not the other way around,” Leigh continued. “When BLM ignores its own management plans to push through a roundup, then rushes to change the plan after it’s sued so the gather looks legal after the fact, it’s not just inequitable, it blows up the entire idea that the public or the courts can rely on the law at all. We are constantly told to ‘follow the process,’ but when the process doesn’t fit BLM’s agenda, they simply discard it and move ahead with a scheme to decimate something the public loves and the law is supposed to protect. That is why we have to take this fight into the Ninth Circuit Court.”

From the opening brief:

“This appeal asks whether the Bureau of Land Management can legally ignore adopted wild horse and burro Herd Management Area Plans and still maintain compliance with the Wild Free‑Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The District Court’s decision permits BLM to disregard these important, legally required planning documents when making significant management decisions, including, as here, the removal of nearly all of the wild horses living inside a herd management area. That result guts the protections of the WHA, which Congress adopted in 1971 to protect wild horses and burros as ‘living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West’ because they are ‘an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.”

Stone Cabin sits in central Nevada, about 30 miles east of Tonopah, on the same high desert where the modern wild horse protection story effectively began. In 1975, BLM conducted the first official roundup under the 1971 Wild Free‑Roaming Horses and Burros Act in this area, with Velma “Wild Horse Annie” Johnston present and under guard after repeated threats, observing whether the new statute would have real effect on the ground. Litigation that followed established that BLM could not claim a blank check to remove horses under the guise of “range improvement,” and that future roundups had to comply with NEPA, consider alternatives, and treat wild horses and burros as part of the same public‑land planning framework that governs every other use.

“In many ways, it feels like we are fighting that very first battle again.”

“Stone Cabin’s grey horses, tied by local history to a Steeldust grey Thoroughbred that gunfighter Jack Longstreet is said to have won in a poker game and turned loose on this range, are a living symbol of the same ‘historic and pioneer spirit’ Congress wrote into the Act—far more than any restored cabin or commemorative sign ever could,” Leigh said. “Yet, half a century after the first case forced BLM to do real environmental analysis, we are back in court over the same landscape, asking federal judges to make the agency follow the planning framework that is supposed to protect this herd. When the rules stand in the way of a gather plan that favors other interests, BLM still behaves as if it can simply change the deck, rewrite the stakes, and pull horses off the range as if cheating at poker. I think historical figures like Longstreet would be just as upset as we are about these shady tactics.”

Plaintiffs are represented by Greenfire Law, PC in Berkeley, California.

Wild Horse Education, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, works to ensure transparent, lawful, and humane management for wild horses and burros across America’s public lands.

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. 

We thank you for being an active advocate and standing up for Freedom, Mercy and Justice.