Sterilization is officially back on the table as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) advances a controversial agenda for the Jackson Mountain Herd Management Area (HMA).

The agency calls its newly approved plan a “management plan.” But it is, in effect, a gather plan taken to an extreme: sterilizing both mares and stallions in a herd already managed at numbers below genetic viability.

This is might seem complicated, but it matters.

In 2012, during our litigation involving Jackson Mountain, BLM stated it would address major unresolved issues through a Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP). Those issues included how population numbers were set on the range and the paperwork needed to recognize Jackson North and Jackson South as two distinct herds with no population exchange. It included creating water improvements. BLM put that commitment in writing.

Now, BLM has moved forward without meaningfully addressing those obligations. Instead, it has added a devastating proposal: sterilizing one-third of a population goal that already risks genetic collapse.

The final plan was released months after Jackson Mountain had already been placed on the roundup schedule—and in the middle of the summer roundup season.

Does BLM create chaos? Yes. Does it assume few people will watch a herd like Jackson Mountain closely enough to stop sterilization from returning? It appears so.

We need to move quickly. If this plan proceeds, sterilization of both males and females could again become part of the federal management playbook for wild horse herds across the West. In past years, persistent public advocacy and legal action helped stop attempts to introduce experimental sterilization into wild herds. We now face another intense fight as BLM attempts to push permanent sterilization through the back door under the label of routine range management.

Our team is drafting an administrative appeal while continuing to cover the Bible Springs, Utah, and Piceance, Colorado, roundups.

A Manufactured Deadline

The timeline is extraordinarily tight:

• Roundup start date: Jackson Mountain is already scheduled for a federal roundup beginning September 20.
• Legal supersession: Once BLM approves a new environmental assessment or plan, it legally supersedes the previous plan.

BLM has not stated if they are using the existing gather plan or implying that the existing plan complies with a new plan? There is no clarity for an agency that is never transparent. Even getting clarity will require “getting attorneys involved.” 

This manufactured urgency is a familiar form of BLM Nevada “chaos management.” By compressing timelines and issuing final decisions shortly before helicopters launch, the agency leaves the public and advocacy organizations little meaningful time to respond.

Our team is working around the clock to submit a formal administrative appeal—the essential first legal step before a challenge can proceed in federal court.

You can help keep our team in the field and cover legal costs by clicking here. Every dollar contributed will be matched through August 15.

What is new plan does and does not

The Jackson Mountains HMA spans 283,775 acres. BLM’s low Appropriate Management Level (AML) is 130 wild horses. Under this plan, BLM proposes sterilizing males and females totaling one-third of that already-low population target. Learn more about AML here.

Please remember the vague term “fertility control” includes sterilization. Right now there are no guard rails on funding coming from Congress. Increases in funding for fertility control include things like the plan at Jackson. Vague language is always dangerous.

Livestock receives roughly 2.8 to 3.9 times more forage than wild horses in the Jackson Mountains. Yet livestock, wildlife, wild horses, and local residents all face an even more serious long-term threat: groundwater drawdown and environmental damage associated with intensive mining pressure.

The HMAP contains no meaningful mitigation measures to protect the herd from those threats. Instead, BLM presents a plan that pushes the herd toward genetic collapse while failing to secure the water and habitat needed for its future.

The likely objective is clear: remove another wild herd from landscapes increasingly sought by industry for private profit on public lands. It is easy to see this plan leading to the next, where there are no resources left to support anything wild or a herd of wild horses, to “zero out” Jackson.

Mining, Water, and Fragmented Habitat

The greatest long-term threat to the Jackson Mountains herd is pressure on regional water resources. Industrial mines in the Great Basin require substantial groundwater pumping to keep open pits dry. That dewatering can reduce local aquifers and threaten springs and seeps.

Jackson Mountain is already vulnerable to severe summer water shortages. In the past, lack of water and declining herd health have prompted emergency BLM gathers. If regional dewatering expands and dries up the remaining springs and seeps, the native range may no longer support the herd.

The politically prioritized rush for hard-rock minerals has also scarred the Jackson Mountains landscape. Junior exploration companies hold thousands of active mining claims across the range. Drill pads, fences, and high-clearance roads cut through public lands and fragment habitat.

This infrastructure reinforces the separation of horses into northern and southern subpopulations. It can cut horses off from high-elevation forage, push them into smaller grazing areas shared with livestock, and intensify pressure on already-limited resources.

Historical mining has left lasting damage as well. Legacy sites—including the DeLong, or Iron King, Mine—include open pits, unstable tailings piles, degraded soils, and other hazards. These sites reduce the amount of viable, nutrient-rich range available to wild horses and wildlife.

Large regional developments, including the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine roughly 45 miles northeast of the HMA, add to the cumulative industrial footprint. Increased heavy-truck traffic along regional corridors, particularly State Highway 140 along the HMA’s northern boundary, also raises collision risks as horses search for food and water.

The true crisis emerges over the next decade. As exploration projects become active, deep open-pit mines, water demands could rise dramatically. Large-scale dewatering creates a “cone of depression” beneath the range, drawing down groundwater and permanently drying the high-elevation springs and seeps essential during Nevada’s hottest months.

None of this is meaningfully mitigated in the so-called HMAP.

BLM’s plan causes more problems. It solves nothing. 

Why is BLM not fully evaluating mining’s cumulative impacts? Ask your members of Congress. These outcomes are being driven by changes in environmental law and policy that increasingly fail to protect wild places—or the rural communities that depend on them.

Our job is to speak for the wild horse herds that are caught in the “private profiteering” model running through wild places. 

That is smoke from wildfire blowing in from far away.

The People Writing—and Running—the Plans

There is a comforting but false belief that the people writing plans in government offices are separate from those carrying out roundups on the ground. They are not. The same officials who design these policies direct helicopter operations and make decisions in the field affecting individual horses.

The person writing this plan is the same one that was in charge during the brutal Blue Wing roundup most of you remember as the one where the “horse was kicked in the head” after being jerked repeatedly by the rope while on the ground. The same individual that ordered roundups to continue during extreme smoke events like “Shawave” and Blue Wing where you could only see the helicopter when the lights flashed. The same person in charge when Sunshine man broke his leg during extreme heat index rises. You get the picture.

The same hands that write the plans are the same ones you know from roundups.

Nothing done in the on-range program comes from a place of “we care” about the horses.

The public-comment period is over.

But those comments established the administrative record and framework for the legal action ahead.

The only way to stop this would be if the Secretary of Interior invalidates the plan (unlikely as this is the agenda ordered from his desk) or from the pen of a Federal Judge.

Through August 15th a generous donor has pledged to match contributions up to $10,000. Every dollar donated will be matched. 

We need your support to keep our teams engaging lawmakers, our team fighting in the court, our team running 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. Sincere Gratitude.