Above: View of newborn coming in from observation vantage atop a hill in 2024 at the trap site used Day 1 and 3 in 2026 from an entirely different vantage point and then in the temporary holding corrals that, in 2026, there is no access to.

As an editor I have a unique and advantageous position. When our team members send in footage from the field I know exactly where they are… because I have been there. I have been documenting roundups for nearly 20 years. There are not many trap locations I have not been to. For over 8 years I spent roundup season entirely on the road; one year putting over 112,000 miles on my truck. That is a lot of trap sites.

As the years went on amazing people began to volunteer for WHE as I had things like a surgery to deal with. It has allowed our organization to grow and maintain integrity to our mission. It also allows me more time for research and litigation (WHE carries 9 federal court actions and we are brining more this month).

We have a volunteer I trained when I went to the North Lander roundup in Wyoming who was at the Swasey trap yesterday. Earlier this year she had an opportunity to solidify her skills at Bible Springs in Utah accompanying a long timer volunteer Marie Milliman. She flew solo for the first time at Confusion and was featured in a photo spread in Desert News sharing her passion for wild horses.

Our volunteers are amazing and I can never express my gratitude enough to each and every one of them. So I want to mention it here as well.

But when your volunteer sends in their daily clips with a note that says “I did my best,” you want to look at why they feel a roundup was challenging to document where you know observation sites are “better.” Is it a mechanical issue with the camera I can help her fix?

No… it is a change in location limiting historic access, not “operator error” of equipment.

You can see daily reports from Swasey HERE.

I know this trap. I know this horse.

At this trap this is the clip that made me understand her concern. As she moves from documenting the trailer, swinging back toward trap, I can see they are near the road. Same as the last trap. Usually there is a bit of hiking at these traps and the loss of personnel may have created a situation where no one is telling the new public affairs person where observation used to be (or someone does not like to hike). She cannot see the long drive or into the draw from where she is. She is also considerably further away.

That clip also made me very sad. The black and white paint had escaped capture at the previous roundups, seems to have found himself 2 new band mates, makes a fast turn in the general area where he escaped the last time, but is captured this time.

Video below is from 2024 where you can see into the draw and see him escape as his mares and foals are captured.

In her video and mine it is the same camera. Not just the same type of camera, the exact same camera.

This is not the first time historic access at this trap has been limited. The view I had in 2024 was restricted from the access in 2020.

In 2020, a mare broke her neck at this trap. The view from atop the knoll made documentation at the trap very clear.

The moment before the mare collides with the panel as sorting of mares and foals began rapidly after capture. She is obscured and in the center of the photo. The next second, her neck broke on collision.

Looking at this simple series of videos and images is a fast way to show you how access is eroding. A picture that shows you were there (like a helicopter and a horse) is not the same as meaningful access to assess and provide input. The type of trap configuration used in 2020 does not allow horses to move far enough away from wranglers to create a “safe zone” in the catch pen as horses have a completely different way of seeing the world as we do (both color and depth perception). The sides were also secured with rebar allowing no flexibility to the panel.  The day before this mares neck broke our team member was able to provide that observation… she was ignored. (For more on vision, click here)

In 2024, we were not ignored when things went sideways.

Even though we could no longer see into the trap, we could see the drive into the wings completely. I was able to see a bands composition prior to it hitting the trap.

When a foal fell back, we could alert BLM. When one literally fled from the area around the base of the mountain we could alert BLM and even provide pictures when they denied it ever happened. It took a bit of persuading, but the operation stopped after two more runs and they finally went to look for the foal that was found, over an hour later, hiding in a drainage ditch.

Public observation is not a field trip to take a picture to say you were there.

This is not the only trap where access has eroded. After our Ninth Circuit First Amendment win in 2012, there are traps where I was frequently within 200 ft of trap or closer. Now our observers can be a mile or more away at those same traps (with longer lenses than I had, but a safety restriction does not change when camera equipment gets better).

We fought in court for access. We fought for 6 years up and down the court system. Many people today do not even know there was a time you could not go to observe roundups daily. There was a time that when you could go, you were behind a mountain or miles away.

There was a battle for meaningful access that played out on the courts affirming our right for that access.

Since 2017, the ability to meaningfully document capture in order to be able to report and provide appropriate and meaningful comment has been slowly eroding.

Over the last year? We have slid back considerably.

Swasey 2024, baby that was lost and found getting electrolytes in trailer at temporary corrals where I was less than 30 ft away.

From the image above to having zero access to temporary corrals and observation so much further away at trap that images appear washed out using the exact same camera at the exact same trap site, but not the same observation location limiting the view into the draw and of the approach to the wings and view into the actual trap.

Back when I first filed to protect our First Amendment right to meaningful access over 15 years ago many people are unaware that I was offered access. Not just access to take a picture of a helicopter and a horse, but trap side access. The kind of access only National Geographic had been afforded before that day. But I had to leave everyone behind. Only I would be given that kind of access.

I turned it down and fought for all.

The right to observe, report, formulate ones own opinion and engage meaningfully in process is not a right that belongs to one person. It is a right that belongs to all Americans.

Our ability to engage led to litigation that drove the create of today’s Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP). Back in the day (it makes me feel so old to phrase it that way) not only were you not allowed to witness roundups each day, but there was not even a program to ensure humane treatment, a main tenet of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

Through meaningful access (and sometimes just sheer luck when access was limited) we were able to change the ability of the public to engage and begin to create meaningful change in the area of capture.

Do we have to fight the battle for meaningful access again?

We are actively putting together a new challenge. We have been here before and meaningful access must be restored for all, not just for “preferred partners that ride the same agenda.” That is simply unAmerican.

Access is not only a roundup documentation issue.

BLM stopped short of completing finalization of enforceable welfare rules as the “get to AML and keep populations absurdly low by whatever means necessary” crowd (often called the Path Forward) ran over everything in the race for funding for vaguely defined fertility control.

Gains both in welfare and on range planning were lost as BLM found partners that would help push the broken program to the brink to maintain the status quo of backdoor agreements. All of you recently saw a backdoor brokered deal to flood BLM with $30. million from USDA to achieve the agenda with zero guardrails and no transparency (either in the process of creating that agreement or in on range management goals).

As we fight for transparent management planning in the courtroom, there are those that arre taking things deeper into hidden deal making.

None of this is “ok.”

One video from our in-field observer this morning set me down this road.

Watching that remarkable stallion who had fought for his freedom and already lost his family, begin to build another, only to lose that family, too.

Watching it happen on a day when BLM captured just 31 wild horses in over 5 hours of active trapping and six runs, on a range the agency calls “overpopulated,” while the process used to set AML (the number of horses allowed to remain) stays hidden from meaningful public scrutiny.

Watching it as backdoor deals move an additional $30 million from USDA toward BLM, on top of another $10 million in the BLM budget, to fund sterilization and experimental fertility control, including procedures that burn the oviducts. As public access is repeatedly restricted. As corporate contractors hold out their hands for funding to help keep wild horse populations absurdly low.

It has all the hallmarks of a snake-oil sales pitch: market a crisis, promise a miraculous “solution” cure, and ask the public to pay without opening either the diagnosis or the treatment to meaningful scrutiny. (“Snake oil” means a worthless or unproven remedy deceptively sold as a miraculous cure for everything from tuberculosis to sore muscles.)

For me that stallion is a blazing symbol of what these decisions mean and what is at stake when an open, accountable public process gives way to decisions made behind closed doors. As access to simply witness to participation in massive funding direction erodes and is left in the hands of those intent to profit from it.

But he is also a living animal who had begun to rebuild what had been taken from him. And now, he lost his new family, too.

It was a lot for this longtime advocate to swallow over morning coffee.

Please take action. 

Call on Congress for an oversight hearing HERE

Call on Congress to set guardrails on the massive influx of money set to push the wild over an edge they may never recover from HERE

The draft regulation changes are expected in the next 60 days. The reg changes will gut the limited protections from sales that leave wild horses and burros vulnerable to slaughter, they will gut on range planning where our lawsuits are gaining ground.

They will also gut the public voice if the reg changes we have seen for livestock and energy are any indication. Spearheading these regulation changes is Karen Budd-Falen,  Wyoming rancher and longtime property-rights attorney who has represented livestock-grazing interests and now serves as associate deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

We have big battles ahead. Please take action today.

Onward,

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.