It has just been announced that thousands of wild horses and burros will vanish, and almost no one will be allowed to watch. On March 10, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) gave last‑minute notice that beginning around March 15 it would launch large bait‑and‑water trap roundups across Nevada during foaling season, precisely when helicopter drive‑trapping is banned from March 1 through June 30. BLM frames bait-trapping as a safer, quieter approach, but for heavily pregnant mares and newborn foals the dangers remain very real—and when BLM shuts out experienced observers like me, it is not only horses that lose, but also the public’s First Amendment right to see and report on what its government is doing.
As someone who has spent hundreds of days observing roundups, I am deeply alarmed. BLM plans to remove about 2,500 wild horses and burros from Nevada’s Antelope/Triple B, Caliente, Spring Mountains, and Pancake complexes. Wild horses captured in these March gathers will still face handling that can injure or kill newborn foals and heavily pregnant mares, but now independent observers are being excluded from days of trapping, hot loading onto trucks, and transport to facilities that are mostly off‑limits to the public.
In practice, BLM is using bait traps during “foaling season” as cover to exclude public observation and conduct mass removals when mares and foals are at their most vulnerable. Once a heavily pregnant mare or tiny foal is inside a trap, the stressors—sorting, loading, long hauls, sudden confinement—pose many risks.
Wild horses are the canary in the constitutional coal mine. BLM’s instinct has not been to strengthen protections for them, but to tighten control over who can see what happens in order to avoid scrutiny. In Leigh v. Salazar, the Ninth Circuit held that the press and public have a qualified First Amendment right to observe wild horse roundups and holding facilities, grounded in the same principles that support access to courtrooms and protests. Later cases, including Courthouse News Service v. Planet and Index Newspapers v. City of Portland, relied on Leigh to require timely, meaningful access and to limit restrictions to those justified by a genuine, overriding interest and narrowly tailored. Nevada’s wild horse cases now help protect reporters and legal observers nationwide.
Against that legal backdrop, BLM’s moves look like a deliberate backslide into secrecy. BLM never conducted the promised reviews of its Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP). In 2020, the agency quietly declared that draft standards were “permanent,” doing so without transparency or public participation and leaving in place practices that allow preventable injuries, illnesses, and deaths of wild horses and burros to continue.
My goal is to help ensure humane treatment and lawful management of wild horses and burros. In the field, I document gathers and report on neglect, abuse, deaths, and CAWP violations. At the Pancake Complex, I filmed a young colt run until his leg snapped—a video that went viral and helped support the federal lawsuit that ordered BLM to begin developing real herd management area plans, instead of relying on “gather and remove” operations. At the same time, BLM should be collecting herd‑specific foaling data or incorporate it into herd management area plans. Concentrating mass removals at the onset of foaling season flatly contradicts any claim of protecting mares and foals.
Instead of protecting and managing wild horses on the range, BLM points to crowded pens and rising costs to justify expanding its Adoption and Sales Program. Advocates warn that this shift exploits a perilous legal loophole that funnels horses into slaughter pipelines. That risk flows from the 2004 Burns Amendment, which ordered BLM to sell certain “excess” horses and burros “without limitation,” stripping them of legal “wild” status and protection from commercial sale once title passes. Investigations documented bulk sales to known kill buyers, including about 1,700 horses to horse slaughter advocate Tom Davis, and a later “four horse limit” has been undercut by exceptions and group‑sale work‑arounds, even as recent press releases market cheap, large‑lot purchases for “trusted partners.”
Wild horse roundups are federal operations on public lands involving public horses. Americans can insist that their lawmakers require BLM to allow independent public observation at trap and holding sites, pause foaling‑season bait‑trap gathers, and strengthen protections to keep wild horses and burros out of slaughter pipelines. What is at stake now is both the welfare of wild horses and our right to know what our government is doing to them in our name.
Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: [email protected].
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Republished with permission from Nevada Current
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