A contractor’s helicopter pursues wild horses near the trap site on the Red Desert Complex in Wyoming in 2020. File photo by Meg Frederick.
UPDATE: The Bureau of Land Management has captured 1,240 wild horses and killed five during the first week of its largest-ever helicopter roundup, happening now in Nevada.
Those killed included two foals, according to the BLM’s gather report: One after being kicked in a holding pen, suffering a broken leg, and another from colic. An adult horse died from a broken neck. Two others were put down for having one eye.
Worse: On top of BLM’s plans to remove 2,000 wild horses from the Callaghan Complex of Herd Management Areas, the agency has no plans to treat and release wild horses with proven, safe and humane fertility control.
Ignoring reproduction guarantees that the BLM will soon return to the same places to take more horses off the range.
How to help: Send a message to Congress.
The BLM has broad authority under the law to set and enforce “Appropriate Management Levels,” or population targets, and enforce them, including through helicopter roundups.
Its stated purpose for this roundup: lower the population of the 1.2 million-acre complex in Lander County, Nev., closer to an Appropriate Management Level of 323–552 wild horses and improve traffic safety. The BLM estimated that there were 4,489 horses there in 2025.
By comparison, the agency allows seasonal grazing on the complex for cattle and sheep for the equivalent of up to 5,132 cow-calf pairs.
Captured horses will be shipped to off-range corrals to be prepped for possible sale or adoption.
Fertility control is a key, readily available tool that can help change the direction of wild horse management. It enjoys support from the public, diverse stakeholders and Congress.
Work by ecologists shows that to stabilize herd populations, fertility control must be implemented immediately, not later, as BLM insists.
Over the past five years, for example, the agency has removed 63,187 wild horses and burros from the range while treating 5,420 with fertility control.
The result of that approach: 58,000 wild horses and burros are warehoused in off-range government holding facilities.