On the 17th day of an operation scheduled to last 53 days, BLM concluded the 2026 Callaghan Complex roundup.
There were 16 days of active trapping.
These recaps are important. They can help you not only understand the roundup operation but the underlying site-specific battle to protect these herds.
The Callaghan Complex cannot be forgotten now that the helicopter has left.
It ended as it began, with absurd access restrictions in the field and continued “math that does not math” from the underlying planning to the conclusion of the first roundup under that plan.
There was not one single day where handling could be assessed at trap or at the holding corrals that were on public lands. Not one single day. Not one single reason met the lawful bar of restricted access, not one.
On the last day, during loading, our team member was told not to take any pictures that included the brand inspector. This is not a lawful restriction for a state or federal employee or their contractors. But out of personal courtesy we are not publishing images of the man that stood directly at the sorting chute and every image of horses near that chute include his blurry outline. No matter how long your lens is, when you are held unreasonably far away everyone turns into a water color, blurry, undistinguishable outline. But we would rather not have important issues buried under the pettiness demonstrated by the BLM and other staff.
The underlying plan aims to push the 1.1 million acre complex “gather area” down to around 323 wild horses. Currently, the BLM claims there were about 5,000 wild horses in the complex. With BLM’s 22% error rate, the estimated population sat somewhere between 3,900-500. Around 2,400 wild horses still exist in this complex and we are in court now to stop the sheer lack of data, analysis of existing data, and “agreement with permittee baselines” to continue to drive how this complex is managed. We are fighting to get the plan kicked to the curb.
Let’s look at the final, official, numbers. Please remember there was a 3 day glitch in loading any official totals and then adjustments. We will not know the final numbers, including how many went to Palomino Valley Center north of Reno and how many went into the off-limits to the public facility Broken Arrow on Indian Lakes Rd in Fallon until FOIA requests are answered. BLM said “about 700” went to PVC.
Simple math: If 11 died and 1992 shipped to the two facilities, how many wild horses are accounted for? The answer is 2003. BLM lists 2005 as captured (the scale the contractor is paid by is a day rate and a per animal rate). What happened to the other two? There is no explanation in the final tally sidebar. You have to go into the revised daily counts to look for an answer. The revised counts changed what was reported during the actual operation. On July 18, at the trap we could not see anything and BLM refused to allow observation of sorting at the corrals instead, they added a “mare released.” We believe they mean a mare escaped (but can’t tell you because we did not see anything). They added that they released a stallion on July 18, probably another escape from trap, but we can’t tell you because we cannot see. BLMs final tally does not list any releases.
Note: Tracking numbers is important for two reasons: Often we find huge disparities and a dozen or more will be unaccounted for and we want to track them down. The other is that it fully illustrates how the agency handles the most basic of data: How many were captured, released or died? When we consistently see so many errors and “after the fact” revisions (that happen only when they are pushed) you get a really clear picture of how the agency handles basic data…. and the answer is “very poorly.”
The mare we were told had arrived at holding dead on the trailer is not included in this total. We do not know how many arrived at the facility “down.” We will not know how many really died until we receive the answers to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and during discovery in the underlying lawsuit.
We do want to take a moment and acknowledge that BLM did change the status of the “drop dead from undiagnosed causes” that they originally classified as non gather related to “gather related deaths.”
On the last day of the roundup, a 7-month old filly died of “unknown causes.”
Below: Last day of roundup, the day the filly died. You can see the wild horse break away back down the wings where a foal lagged behind. Instead of letting them settle, the blue helicopter chases the adult off, the foal tried to follow. The foal is roped. Back when BLM said they were creating the draft welfare standards (that they never put out for public review and formalization to make them enforceable) BLM said they were going to include required training in equine behavior and concepts like “pressure and release” for pilots. When you watch roundups it is easy to see that the “memo never went out.”
The last death, the foal on the last day, was counted as acute. A death associated with capture. This is the only trap, the last day, where we could even guess which wild horses actually went into the trap. That is how bad access was.
The other sudden deaths were not counted as roundup related and instead listed as chronic. We have been reporting on those deaths throughout the operation.
Acute, 8: 7 m/o, bay, mare- Died/Unexpected, Undiagnosed, 3 y/o, Bay, mare, died, traumatic head injury, 2 y/o, Bay, mare, died, undiagnosed, 3 m/o, Bay, mare – Died: chronic, undiagnosed/Unknown, 3 m/o, Bay mare, died unexpected, undiagnosed, 3 y/o, Bay, Mare – Acute/Sudden, broken neck, 3 m/o, Sorrel, filly – Acute/Sudden, indicators consistent with colic, Sorrel, filly, <6 months, Acute/Sudden, Euthanized, kicked in holding resulting in broken leg. 6 of these are foals. (It is important to note that in “gather speak” a 3 month old foal is basically any foal from 1-12 weeks old)
Pre-existing / Chronic, 3: 3 m/o, Bay Mare, Chronic/Pre-existing, respiratory infection, 10 y/o, Bay, stud, Chronic/Pre-existing, missing and eye, 3 y/o , Bay, stud, Chronic/Pre-existing, missing an eye.
The foal that died of “respiratory infection” was not diagnosed by an onsite veterinarian. Symptoms of respiratory distress were conveyed, via a phone call, and after a day of running back and forth across a valley all day, the respiratory distress was considered “non gather related.” The day this baby was run the heat index rose into dangerous territory and foals were run all day long. The events of the day spurred us to write extensively about foals and heat index. You can see that report and video here.
The two BLM claims were “missing an eye” were caught in an area we have documented for 17 years and never documented a wild horse with a missing eye. We were denied any access to assess handling at the temporary corrals. But in the past we have documented numerous, more numerous than should ever happen, facial injuries near the eye and even wild horses coming out of the chute with a punctured eye, after wild horses go through this particular chute.
There has been no vet onsite this entire roundup. Not at trap nor at the temporary corrals.
There are no necropsies being performed. This is really disturbing considering these deaths could provide vital insight into “what happens to foals when you run them in July in high heat indexes and maybe you should stop doing it.” It is also disturbing when you look at population statistics for herds in this area: there are large numbers of wild horses that do missing. In 2024, instead of showing an 8-15% growth rate, nearly 1,100 wild horses simply vanished with no sanctioned removal in Bald Mountain and South Shoshone. This is an area of heavy mining activity. Did someone illegally remove over 1,100 wild horses or is there environmental damage? Necropsies could have been really helpful to uncover potential causes. Just 10 days into the roundup, yet another mine expansion is being approved without any new environmental assessment.
Right before the roundup. Wild horses and pronghorn were all pushed over to a water that has been in disrepair after thousands of sheep hit the range with their humans and dogs.
BLM scheduled a roundup in July to last throughout August.
They scheduled this roundup in an area known for intense summer heat.
They scheduled this roundup in an area known, by anyone that actually visits the area, to have a foaling season that extends into July.
BLM does not take any of these factors into account when writing the schedule or executing a roundup operation. In fact, if you travel this roundup road long enough, you will find the large herds in Nevada always get the worst possible slots on the schedule. If there is a big Nevada roundup you will be on the range in July (as foaling season continues into the hottest months of the year) or you will be out at the end of January into February as foaling season begins. Getting on the schedule is simply about space in holding and money in the budget. The schedule has nothing to do with welfare and safety.
There is a prohibition against doing helicopter drive-trapping during foaling season. A meaningless statement: if there is no data so BLM can just do whatever they want and claim they are the “experts.” It is worth noting that the BLM staff in charge of this operation from this district have the least amount of combined equine experience in the nation and that includes employees that have expressed outright hostility toward wild horses. This district manages more wild horses than the states of Idaho, Colorado and Montana combined. Those states have 5 dedicated Wild Horse and Burro Specialists. Between the two field offices in the Battle Mountain District there is 1 dedicated Wild Horse and Burro Specialist at this time. Battle Mountain is 10.5 million acres and nearly 4 million of those acres contains wild horse and burro management tasks. During our years attempting to assist this district we advocated for them to be able to hire a third specialist. They have the ability to hire 3 for this district. Instead , they hired additional staff to assist with livestock and mining. We believe many of those people have since quit or transferred. Due to this kind of on again off again staffing, overloading of a single program staff member, this district has very little actual monitoring data done by anyone that even remotely understands wild horses and burros.
There are Callaghan Complex (South Shoshone) births at Palomino Valley Center from mares captured at the start of this operation. Foaling season continues into July on these ranges. BLM keeps no statistics. We will have more from our team members tracking into holding onsite and through FOIA soon.
BLM did not execute this operation with caution. They did not capture a few bands early in the day and then let the rest settle, get water, nurse new babies. BLM plowed ahead without a care because they needed to remove the wild horses from a single HMA, the South Shoshone. An area BLM neglected creating any data based management; BLM recognized the number allowed (AML) and boundary lines were wrong. BLM moved twice to correct this: once in 2012 and again in 2016. Both efforts were waylaid by incompetence and politics.
The very first day BLM overcrowded the holding corrals (the number one violation of BLM CAWP recommendations) and failed to recognize the amount of water they would need to truck into the facility. We reminded them. BLM continued to crowd the corrals, but not as bad as that first day. Three wild horses died that were captured that first day (nearly a third of all reported deaths): 3 y/o, Bay, Mare – Acute/Sudden, broken neck, 3 m/o, Sorrel, filly – Acute/Sudden, indicators consistent with colic (stress), Sorrel, filly, <6 months, Acute/Sudden, Euthanized, kicked in holding resulting in broken leg. They did suspend trapping the next day to ship.
Did she die that first day? We can’t tell you. She lived in the area of the trap. She is not there now.
1871 of the 2005 captured came from South Shoshone. Only 134 were captured from Callaghan (even though BLM asserts the same “overpopulation metric” in both). BLM slammed previously unrelated Herd Management Areas (HMA) together in nothing but an administrative construct to shortchange the paperwork and actual analysis to get this on the gather schedule.
From the very beginning this was a “clear South Shoshone and a grazing allotment in Callaghan” operation. We told the court. BLM told the court we were just speculating as this was a “complex wide” roundup and not a one HMA operation. Briefing is active in this case and the court will be informed that what we said would happen, happened.
The underlying lawsuit continues. BLM estimates that there were over 5000 wild horses in the complex pre-roundup. BLM fails to note the 22% downward error rate. In they were 22% off mark (Saylor Creek was 24% off estimate, downward) that meant there were likely 3,900-5000. There are still 2000-3000 wild horses in this complex that need BLM to stop playing games and create real management planning that fixes boundary lines, sets a fair AML they once believed was over 2,000 for the herds in this complex and begins to mitigate the impacts livestock and mining have on these herds and the range… instead of decades of punishing wild horses for the damages caused by profiteers on public lands. After all, the wild horses are the public resource that requires that protection under law.
At these operations BLM consistently tries to draw everything down to the lowest possible denominator: get it caught in Facebook like debates so we can obfuscate what we really did.
From trying to get one advocate mad at another, to baiting advocates day-after-day with no access and dancing around questions, to creating non operation related arguments and fabricating past incidents from years gone by (including making up “court orders” that never existed), BLM consistently does everything they can to avoid a real discussion.
It all needs to stop… now.
The lawsuit to create a real future for wild horses at the Callaghan Complex continues.
This was a really hard roundup for many of our team members.
On top of the constant games played by BLM, we watched wild horses we have known for a very long time leave the range. We know very little about what really happened to them because BLM would not let us witness. We know even less about the majority of the wild horses shipped to the off-limits to the public facility Broken Arrow on Indian Lakes Rd in Fallon (we type out the name and location of this facility because really bad press when this facility opened caused BLM to stop calling it “Broken Arrow” and start calling it “Indian Lakes.”)
Our team was at this operation from start to finish. We were the only ones that stayed after the big headlines at the beginning. Callaghan was not a talking point for us. The Callaghan Complex is a place of nearly two-decades of advocacy. South Shoshone has had only one roundup since the 1971 Act passed.
It is a real shame that BLM did this one with no data-based justifications at all… except decades of neglecting to create a management plan and a slapshod gather plan instead.
We will continue the fight long after the helicopters have left.
For those of you tracking fires, we updated our national info with a focus on Oregon, click HERE.
WHE is a small organization with no corporate sponsors or big endorsements. 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.
Categories: Wild Horse Education
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