Our Power, Our Planet: Progress does not happen in silence.
It happens when people show up.

Earth Day 2026 carries a clear message: Our Power, Our Planet, Progress does not happen in silence.
It happens when people show up. It’s a reminder that environmental leadership does not just come from agencies, legislatures, or boardrooms—it comes from communities willing to show up, again and again, where decisions are made and where damage is done. Leadership is not just words for public relations: it means showing up every single day with actions that address desperately needed reforms in every layer of public lands management where our wild horses and burros need us.

For wild horses, burros, and the habitats they depend on, that power is measured in very concrete ways: an appeal filed before a bad grazing decision takes effect that stops the disastrous plan, a lawsuit that forces real management planning for wild horses and burros, a coalition that stops a mine before springs run dry. That is the work of WHE. We have done all of that and more.

Turning Up the Pressure for Real Management

Showing up also means refusing to accept a management system built on endless removals and invisible paperwork. For decades, BLM has used short, gather-focused EAs to authorize roundups while postponing the real work: Herd Management Area Plans (HMAPs) that disclose forage allocations, habitat goals, and how “Appropriate Management Levels” are actually set.

In the late 1980s BLM simply stopped creating HMAPs. Instead BLM simply skipped this step and masqueraded roundup plans as complete planning while disallowing any public input on any activity beyond population control (roundup/infertility procedures). They did no disclosure on allowed management levels (AML), how forage allocations are created, no habitat improvements, not even a definition of rangeland goals except to say “get to AML” as if that solved every problem from overgrazing by domestic livestock and drought.

For decades they stated “We do not have to do HMAPs” as if it were fact. Our lawsuits proved them wrong.

Instead of creating actual management planning BLM is trying to pass off roundup plans as HMAPs because they simply typed a new title and changed a few words. Could it be that BLM never collected any data or did any analysis to support any claim that the numbers they state are “appropriate” on the range are in fact, fact? It seems BLM has been skipping actual data collection and analysis for so long they have forgotten what that means.

Today BLM is claiming that HMAPs cannot amend land use plans, just as they claimed they did not have to do HMAPs in the first place. This is simply not true in a plain reading of all laws and policy documents. We are carrying cases from northern California through Nevada and into Arizona for wild horses and burros addressing numerous flaws in land use planning and HMAPs.

To “keep wild horses and burros wild” for future generations we must continue to “show up” and press these cases forward. Not only do these cases expose the historic corruption in the framework, they set the stage for real, desperately needed reform. 

We will never stop fighting to gain enforceable welfare rules. This fight sits at the core of all we do. We will never stop fighting to close the loopholes that land our wild ones in the slaughter pipeline. Both of these layers are the most public reflections of a broken program that betrays the original intention of the 1971 law.

Abuses in the program extend deep into “ground zero.” On range management planning is the beginning of the betrayal. It sets up the “remove, stockpile and ship out the backdoor while we give away our public on-range resources to private profiteers” cycle destroying both our public lands and leaving our wild herds in fragments.

Our team is stepping up. Will you step up to help us?

Please click here to learn more and take action as the next round of Congressional activity begins for the FY2027 budget bill. 

Together we are a voice that cannot be ignored.

Happy Earth Day!

Right now your contribution will be matched in honor of National Volunteer Week and Earth Day!

Through May 1, your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000. 

We need your support to keep our teams engaging lawmakers, our team fighting in the court, our team ready to run the roundup schedule. 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.