A helicopter drives Triple B wild horses into a trap site on Nov. 5, 2025. BLM photo.
The Bureau of Land Management recently completed a month-long helicopter roundup of wild horses on Nevada’s Triple B Complex, removing 2,131 horses from their home range.
Twenty-seven wild horses were killed:
- seven suffered what BLM calls sudden or acute deaths, among them a ruptured aorta and broken necks,
- 20 were put down for “pre-existing or chronic conditions,” like poor body condition scores and having one eye.
The Triple B Complex is made up of 1.6 million acres of public and private land. The roundup left a BLM-estimated 1,123 wild horses there, moving the agency closer to its own population target of 482-821 horses.
Working under a federal multiple-use mandate, the BLM also permits the grazing of privately owned cattle, sheep and horses on Triple B — the equivalent of up to 7,269 cow-calf pairs annually.
At roundup’s end, the BLM released just 23 mares treated with fertility control and 16 stallions.
It has now captured and removed 5,206 Triple B wild horses over the past six years while treating 73 mares, at most.
We strongly support a robust program of proven, safe and humane fertility control that would slow (not stop) reproduction, replacing removals as the BLM’s primary management tool.
If mares are not treated then released, roundups will continue to be followed by the same populations increasing, then BLM returning to remove and place more wild horses and burros into off-range holding.
More than 66,000 already live in government facilities, costing taxpayers $108.5 million annually. Those adopted or sold outright at risk of ending up in the foreign slaughter pipeline.