USFS: Helicopters, Hearings, and Harm: Stand Up at Motorized Vehicle Hearing (June 8)

WHE CAWP Assistant Director, Colette Kaluza, with a reminder about the USFS Motorized Vehicle Use Hearing scheduled tomorrow.

Beginning as early as this summer, 300-500 wild horses will be removed from the Mono Lake/Montgomery Pass areas.

Helicopters, Hearings, and Harm: Stand Up at Motorized Vehicle Hearing (June 8)

The Inyo National Forest will hold a virtual public hearing on June 8 to receive public input on the proposed use of helicopters and other motorized vehicles to round up and remove wild horses from areas outside the Montgomery Pass Wild Horse Territory (CA-NV) this year. The virtual meeting will take place from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. PST, and is the public’s only opportunity to speak about motorized vehicle use and the impacts of roundups on the horses and burros subjected to them.

This is not a general “wild horse management” meeting. It is focused on the mechanized tools of roundup—helicopters, trucks, trailers, and ATVs—and on what happens to wild horses and burros when those tools are deployed.

Recent motorized vehicle hearings have become increasingly constrained, with shortened time frames and limited public participation. At a recent Bureau of Land Management (BLM) motorized vehicle hearing in April 2026, an advertised two-hour comment period was cut off after about an hour, leaving many people without the chance to speak. Forest Service hearings are generally limited to one hour, and during a prior hearing for Modoc and Inyo National Forests on October 10, 2024, members of the public were shut out of speaking as soon as the hour expired.

What’s At Stake

Section 404 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) requires land management agencies to hold annual public hearings before using helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and other mechanized equipment in wild horse and burro gathers and population surveys. The problem is not the existence of hearings, but how they are treated.

Agencies do not respond to the significant public input provided at these hearings, and they also fail to analyze what happens to wild horses and burros when these tools are deployed.

Yet every gather plan that (purportedly) analyzes the action of gather in a site-specific fashion (as required by NEPA), cites these annual hearings as fulfilling compliance to an analysis requirement of the physical action of gather.    

In fact, not one single helicopter-driven Gather Environmental Assessment (Gather-EA) analyzes the impacts of rounding up horses and burros on the horses and burros rounded up.

To date, helicopter-driven Gather-EAs have failed to provide a thorough, science-based analysis of the impacts of roundups on the wild horses and burros subjected to them. Families are broken apart, foals are pushed beyond their physical limits, and animals are injured or killed, yet those consequences are found nor analyzed  in any planning documents and their absence is being used to justify more roundup operations.

“See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”

The proverb of the three wise monkeys—“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”—captures the dynamic that has developed around motorized vehicle hearings and Gather-EAs–a lack of moral responsibility on the part of people who refuse to acknowledge impropriety, looking the other way, or feigning ignorance.  Agencies hold a bare-minimum hearing to check a legal requirement, decline to meaningfully engage with the substance of public testimony, and then point to the hearing as though it fulfills their duty to analyze the actual, on-the-ground effects of aggressive capture operations.

For years, the public has been providing comments for these hearings under Section 404 of FLPMA.  They have commented on conduct and events associated with helicopter-driven roundups and other mechanized gather methods that are causing unnecessary suffering, injuries and death and need to be analyzed.  Despite this, agencies have not revised the field standards or created binding welfare rules..

When government refuses to fully acknowledge, study, or respond to documented harms, the burden of protecting wild horses and burros falls even more heavily on the public—observers, animal and wild horse and burro advocates and organizations to speak up.

What To Ask For In Your Comments

The key points advocates have used in BLM’s national motorized vehicle hearings are equally relevant here, such as:

• Written responses and analysis

Ask that the agency publish written responses to public comments, including a clear analysis document that summarizes issues raised, provides responses, and identifies specific reforms or policy changes adopted as a result.

• Helicopter rules based on safety and welfare

Call for clear, enforceable rules on helicopter operations, including minimum altitudes, required distances from horses and burros and ground personnel.

• Safe transport standards

Insist on limits for trailer speeds and minimum road-condition standards to reduce transport injuries and deaths, and require suspension of hauling during extreme heat, ice, or other hazardous conditions.

• No ATVs used to chase or herd animals

Oppose the use of ATVs or similar vehicles to chase, haze, or herd wild horses and burros for any purpose, due to the heightened risk of falls, collisions, and panic-induced injuries.

• Foaling-season protections

Require site-specific foaling-season protections, including clear calendar dates and on-the-ground assessment of foal presence, with mandatory suspension of helicopter operations when newborn foals or heavily pregnant mares are present.

• End helicopter trapping for burros

Call for a ban on helicopter trapping of wild burros, with particular attention to the vulnerability of pregnant and nursing jennies and the higher risk of mortality in these groups.  In at least one documented gather, agency data show death rates in burro populations can rise as high as 24% in subset population (pregnant and nursing jennies).

• Use current veterinary standards for heat and air quality

Demand that Heat Index and Air Quality Index thresholds reflect current veterinary guidance for equine exertion and transport, with mandatory pauses or postponements when those thresholds are exceeded

The Missing Animal Welfare Program

USFS does not currently have an animal welfare program.  The agency appears to be relying on borrowed standards and operating procedures for gathers– BLM’s Comprehensive Animal Welfare (CAWP) Standards and Standard Operating Procedures–even though those frameworks have repeatedly failed to prevent harmful practices or provide robust oversight.

Your comments can press the agency to take responsibility for creating a genuine animal welfare program, rather than simply adopting someone else’s incomplete model. That means:

• Developing clear, concise welfare standards written specifically for Forest Service wild horse and burro operations, grounded in current veterinary science and documented field experience.
• Releasing draft standards for public review and comment, and issuing a written, reasoned response that explains how public input was considered and what changes were made.
• Formalizing those standards through rule-making, so welfare protections become binding policy, not optional guidelines that can be ignored in the field.

Until a program like this exists, wild horses and burros managed by the Forest Service remain vulnerable to inconsistent practices, weak accountability, and the absence of enforceable minimums for humane treatment.

How to Submit Public Input
Public input regarding motorized vehicle use for this gather may be submitted in two ways:

• During the virtual public hearing, up to two minutes per speaker. Utilizing the “raise hand icon” meeting attendees will be called upon. Please include your name and any organization you may be representing.
  • Date: June 8, 3:30-4:30 p.m.
  • Microsoft Teams link:  Inyo National Forest Virtual Public Hearing on Motorized Vehicle Use for Wild Horse Management 
  • Callin: +1 323-886-7051
  • Phone Conference ID: 587 943 366#
  • Meeting ID: 261 092 777 717 410
• In writing, via email by June 8 by 4:30 p.m. PST: sm.fs.inyowh_b@usda.gov

Additional technical guidance Microsoft website.  Source USFS

Although Forest Service materials suggest that recordings, transcripts, and minutes will be posted after the hearing, they do not currently maintain a public, centralized archive of motorized vehicle hearings similar to BLM’s dedicated motorized vehicle hearing page, which includes recordings of past hearings and testimony from organizations and advocates (though not written comments).