The Roundup Schedule (A Hard Look)

Above: One of the last wild horses captured at the end of the Owyhee Complex roundup of 2026 makes a dangerous and brave escape. Let’s not forget that BLM used an emergency designation under a fire rehab plan and not an active gather EA to get this operation done as private livestock grazing season gets underway. 

The new BLM roundup schedule is not just a single shocking number; it is a map of individual herds, legal battles, and political choices that will define whether truly wild horses and burros survive on our public lands. When we flatten all of that into one tagline number, we erase both the lived reality of each herd and the work you are helping us do to defend them. We must stretch to defend our herds plan-by-plan as Congress continues political poker.

The first actual “gather schedule” from BLM in Fiscal Year 2026, 6 months into the year, targets 14,830 wild horses and burros for capture. But that is not the “whole story.” 

The Number vs. The Story

BLM’s 2026 roundup schedule will be marketed as a response to “overpopulation” backed by the agency’s 2026 Population Statistics Report, which claims 85,466 wild horses and burros on the range against a combined high AML of 25,592 and a low AML of just 15,374. On paper, that framing turns an already tiny, fragmented population into a manufactured crisis, justifying more removals, more holding corrals, and renewed lobbying for lethal control authority. In practice, the schedule is being built around that low AML “floor,” not the high AML “ceiling,” driving removals to the lowest possible number and keeping forage allocations for livestock essentially intact.

If this were any other species we were talking about even the inflated national number would be considered a conservation crisis, not one of overpopulation. (See our review of the Population Statistic Report HERE)

But if we stop at “BLM plans to remove X thousand horses,” we miss the entire context: AMLs set decades ago under political pressure, outdated or missing census data, and a program design that channels public funds into permanent off‑range holding instead of on‑the‑range management and habitat protection. The real story of this schedule lives in the specific herds BLM chose to put on the list, and the ones it wanted to put there but couldn’t yet—because of funding limits, legal challenges, or both.

What’s Not on the Schedule (But Still in the Crosshairs)

Some of the herds you care about are not on the 2026 schedule at all, even though they remain active targets inside BLM’s internal planning.

• Stone Cabin / Saulsbury (NV): Our Ninth Circuit appeal challenges BLM’s ten‑year gather plan that could remove more than 1,000 wild horses and drive Stone Cabin down to as few as 218 horses and Saulsbury to as few as 24 on over 543,000 acres. We are asking the court to confirm that once a Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) exists, BLM cannot simply ignore its terms and proceed with large‑scale removals based on complex‑wide shortcuts and after‑the‑fact paperwork. Because Ninth Circuit precedent governs much of the West, this case could determine whether HMAPs are enforceable obligations or just paper promises.

• Kiger (OR): Kiger is not on the current schedule, but BLM has already signaled its intent to target this celebrated herd, and the area is in existing litigation raising concerns about a “predetermined” outcome in the gather plan—precisely the kind of bias NEPA is supposed to prevent. When the person who wrote the plan tells a court it was predetermined, it exposes a deeper problem: decisions being made to fit a pre‑selected removal number, not built from baseline data and honest alternatives analysis. Something that happens with every single gather plan without the employee that wrote the plan being brave enough to come forward.

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  Adobe Town, part of the same RMP the court shot down but before “gather plan specific” litigation, was hit hard during July, the actual foaling season, in 2025.

  Rock Springs “zero‑out” (WY): Rock Springs has been at the center of efforts to “zero out” herds through land use planning, and the agency is under court orders to bring its Resource Management Plan into compliance while new lawsuits challenge how it is trying to do that. The fact that these herds are not on this year’s schedule does not mean they are safe; it means BLM is still working to line up the paperwork to permanently erase them, often in direct conflict with the 1971 Act’s mandate to protect wild horses and burros as integral components of public lands.

These “off‑schedule” herds illustrate why that single national number is so misleading: it cannot tell you that a herd like Saulsbury may be reduced to a remnant of two dozen horses, or that entire complexes are being pushed toward functional extinction while still being counted as “managed.” The schedule omits intention.

What Is on the Schedule (And Already in Court)

Even where a herd appears on the BLM schedule, the story is far from settled. Many of the 2026 targets are already in federal court or in active administrative appeals. Remember, schedules change often. Because a herd is on the schedule does not mean it wonlt be modified or dropped altogether.

• Carter Reservoir / Buckhorn / Coppersmith (CA): These herds appear on the schedule with a target start date of September 1, even as our joint federal case with Carter Reservoir Mustangs Inc. moves forward. We have filed a formal opposition to BLM’s Motion to Dismiss, laying out how low AMLs, repeated gathers, and land use decisions threaten the long‑term viability, visibility, and cultural value of these wild horses. Despite BLM’s efforts to dodge judicial review at the motion‑to‑dismiss stage, the court is being asked to keep the case alive so that a judge can review the actual gather plans, population assumptions, and habitat management choices before irreversible damage is done. We are exploring additional options we can take in this already active litigation.

• Pancake Complex (NV): Pancake appears on the schedule as a bait‑trap operation for roughly 300 horses, but BLM’s real target is far higher, and the complex is back in court after our earlier win forced the agency to confront its decades‑long failure to prepare a lawful HMAP. In 2024 we secured a precedent‑setting ruling that BLM’s delays on HMAPs in the complex were “nothing short of egregious” and that the agency had never disclosed how it set AML or how its removals would affect wildfire risk, foaling habitat, or cumulative range conditions. BLM responded by issuing a rebranded “Gather and Herd Management Area Plan” that keeps the same low AML and still lacks fundamental data and analysis—a document now under challenge in a new lawsuit.

• Callaghan (NV): At Callaghan, BLM’s on‑paper removal objective for this cycle is 2,000 wild horses, but the underlying Environmental Assessment lays out a larger target of up to 5,000 horses! Administrative appeals have just begun, and we are contesting not only the numbers but the absence of transparent triggers for livestock reductions, protections for critical habitat, and a science‑based definition of foaling season that should constrain when and how captures occur. This case is the logical follow-up to our Pancake ruling and new litigation there.

• Burros at Lake Pleasant, Bordo, Bullfrog, Canyonlands: Burros are being hit especially hard in this schedule, with aggressive removals planned at Lake Pleasant and other complexes while Tassi–Gold Butte, a long‑term target, is being fought in the administrative appeal process and is not on the schedule. BLM appears to be concerned about new data that clearly demonstrates helicopter capture should never be used with burros; instead keeping the option open in challenged plans but placing them on the schedule as “bait traps” in almost a silent recognition that to fly a chopper in burros country could result in a court issuing a very fast injunction. BLM has still not fixed any flawed methodology that continues to treat burros as horses (when they are clearly not).

Against that backdrop, BLM’s own schedule document acknowledges that its gather calendar is not fixed in stone; dates, locations, and methods are routinely modified, delayed, or cancelled as litigation, budgets, and politics shift.

That fluidity is not a reason for despair—it is the narrow opening through which advocacy, science, and law can still change outcomes on the ground.

Sand Wash Basin: Cooperation Punished?

Sand Wash Basin in Colorado is one of the clearest examples of how “feel‑good” narratives about partnership can mask a much harsher reality for the horses. Even the new “agreement” with the state of CO does not impact direction.

For more than two decades, Sand Wash has cycled through removals justified as “necessary management,” including a large 2021 helicopter roundup that drew national attention and a more recent bait‑trap operation that removed 42 wild horses, sending them to off‑range holding in Canon City. At the same time, local advocates have worked with BLM on fertility control and range improvements, with certified volunteers delivering PZP and other measures intended to stabilize the herd on the range.

Now Sand Wash appears twice on the BLM schedule—once for darting and once for removals—putting beloved, well‑documented horses back in the crosshairs. Instead of treating collaboration as a pathway to reduce conflict and keep horses free, BLM is layering new removals on top of existing fertility control, feeding public distrust and the sense that even good‑faith cooperation by advocates is met with more capture, not less. When a herd that has been held up as a model for partnership becomes the target of dual dart‑and‑remove operations, the message to local communities is chilling: your work is expendable when it conflicts with internal removal quotas and “time” to work out challenges is not an option.

Remember BLMs target is low AML. The current low AML BLM uses for Sand Wash Basin is 163 wild horses. In BLM’s March 1, 2026 Population Statistics Report, the Sand Wash Basin HMA is listed with an estimated population of 505 wild horses. That means BLM was approved to remove 100 (right now) but will get this herd back on the schedule to remove hundreds more.

Why Litigation Matters—and Why We Can’t Give Up

Given this landscape, litigation has become one of the only tools with real leverage to force BLM back toward lawful, science‑based management and away from politically driven, “wild west” decision‑making. From Stone Cabin/Saulsbury to Pancake, from Carter/Buckhorn/Coppersmith to Callaghan and beyond, each case is about far more than a single roundup; it is about whether federal agencies must honor their own management plans, disclose how they set AML, and consider alternatives that do not treat our wild horses and burros as disposable obstacles.

But litigation is only possible—and only powerful—because you are in this with us.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you look at a schedule with thousands of removals and a political machine that wants to drive wild horses and burros down to a token presence on the range.

But hidden inside that schedule are leverage points: herds already in court, targets that depend on untested assumptions, and decisions BLM cannot lawfully make without facing challenges it has not yet answered.

We are committed to stretching every mile, every document review, and every legal filing as far as our resources will allow to win more space, more mercy, and more justice for these herds.

The legacy of advocacy today must not be that we watched the last truly wild ones disappear—it must be that, when the numbers were weaponized and the system seemed rigged, we refused to look away, refused to reduce these lives to a single statistic, and refused to give up.

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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.