Scott Sonner / AP, file
Wild horses that were captured from U.S. rangeland stand in a holding pen, at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Center in Palomino Valley, about 20 miles north of Reno, Nev., on May 25, 2017. Wild horse advocates are accusing U.S. land managers of violating environmental and animal protection laws by approving plans for the nation’s largest holding facility for thousands of mustangs captured on public lands in 10 western states.
Friday, Aug. 4, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Wildlife conservation in Nevada
Many Nevadans may be familiar with the video of Sunshine, a Palomino horse with a coat that shone like gold in the sun, being chased by a helicopter for 30 minutes during a June roundup.
The horse was fleeing on three legs, his fourth having sustained a “catastrophic compound fracture” as he tried to escape.
After this incident and a number of others where the safety of wild horses and foals has been compromised, Wild Horse Education, a Reno-based nonprofit,recently filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management alleging abusive treatment of horses during these roundups.
Laura Leigh, leader of Wild Horse Education, called this “a desperate plea when everything else fails.”
“Right now, we’ve got to fix this, because this is life and death,” Leigh said. “That’s literally one of the most heartbreaking pieces of the story is that that’s not a place (people) actually agree. Words are very different than actions, and BLM saying ‘we care’ and then doing this again and again and again and again, is not ‘we care.’ Words have to match actions.”
The Sun sat with Leigh to discuss wild horse roundups in Nevada, suggestions for more humane ways to gather these horses and her passion for protecting wild horses.
Many observers see wild horses being rounded up and aren’t sure why this is happening. Can you detail the reasoning behind the practice?
No. 1, Nevada has more wild horses than all other states combined.
Just like with any wildlife, habitat loss and fragmentation is kind of at the heart of it. When people think of public lands, they think of wide open spaces, and they’re not wide open spaces. It’s a series of fenced grazing allotments for livestock and mining. I just saw an article about the number of mining claims (and) the way they’ve just jumped just over the last two years. All of that stuff is also happening where the wild horses live, and so there’s always been this debate over who gets the resources, and how do we get those resources — and wild horses are part of that conversation.
Habitat loss and fragmentation is the driver behind the challenges faced by all wildlife, wild horses included. And then that’s where we get into the complicated debate: Should we have them out here or not?
So, one of the things the federal government came up with was essentially that we have this land, we don’t want the horses on this land, so let’s just grab them and take them elsewhere. Right?
In a nutshell, and very light, basic terms. Before the 1971 wild horse and burro act, waterholes were being poisoned. Everybody’s seen “The Misfits,” we know what that looked like. And then when the federal government got jurisdiction under the 1971 (Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros) Act, helicopters became the preferred method for removal in the late 1970s.
Many people have seen video or photos of the horse — Sunshine — trying to flee on three legs for 30 minutes during a June roundup. It didn’t look humane. What was your reaction, and what could have been differently?
I threw up. I cried (and) I threw up.
No. 1, the roundup shouldn’t have been taking place in July. July is still foaling season, and with horses, foaling season coincides with breeding season. So (for) a lot of people, it’s easy to see the little baby struggling, but it’s kind of harder for the public to understand that the stallions are really in there keyed up. They’re in high gear, they’re protecting their families and they’re trying to breed. If they’re there in that high gear, they’re going to be more likely to try to escape.
And then No. 2, if that type of injury happened and there was no roundup, the ranger would have shot him immediately from distance instead of running him 35 minutes to the other side of the valley to shoot him. He should have been dispatched immediately. Observers should have been told, “Look, we’ve got to take care of this right away. Do you mind putting down your camera?” I don’t know one person who wouldn’t have and then, he should have been dispatched right there.
That horse should not have been run on three legs and a stump like that, period. They brought out a helicopter and chased him with a helicopter on three legs with a catastrophic compound fracture for 35 minutes.
These roundups have been occurring for a while, so why did Wild Horse Education decide to file this lawsuit now?
So, we litigated this issue of abusive roundups in 2010, ’11, ’12 and ’13. The courts placed some restraints on the BLM about how to move forward. In the end of 2015, the beginning of the government’s fiscal 2016 year, they adopted what they call the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program and said that they would be doing annual reviews and revisions. Asking BLM, can I participate in the review, (they said), “Oh, Laura, give us time, be patient, we’re doing them, we’re doing the reviews.”
In 2021, I found out no review had been done and they actually had just hired somebody to run the program. Over the last two years, there have been no revisions (and) no public comment period has ever resulted in even a response. We’ve tried testimony at the annual motorized vehicle hearings; we tried sending packets to everybody up and down the food chain; and absolutely nothing.
Then, we came out here to report from the roundup — it’s something I’ve been doing for nearly 15 years. Right out of the gate, we saw this was going to be bad with BLM ignoring those health warnings, those heat warnings that were being generated by the news and still using the antiquated maximum temperature as a guideline. Instead of taking preventive measures, they were just going to push as hard as they possibly could. We tried working it out on site, (but) I got no movement and had no choice and had to file litigation.
What are some ways the BLM can change its guidelines on conducting roundups?
That’s actually what we’re asking the court to enjoin here. No. 1, they shouldn’t be doing roundups in July. And as climate change begins to create more of an impact in summer, summer roundups are probably simply not a good idea anymore.
BLM is notorious for dragging their feet to change anything. They’re that loath to change, and we just don’t have time for them to keep dragging their feet while foals suffer, horses continue to die in holding and continue to die at trap. It’s absurd.
Do you think there’s a more humane way to trap and relocate these horses? If so, what are your proposals?
There’s a number of different things BLM could be doing instead of helicopters, like bait-and-water trapping in the fall when there’s no foals, things like that. They could be doing that if they determined that horses absolutely need to be removed, but like I said, they have to make a data-based decision that horses need to be removed and not just keep kicking the can down the road on that as well.
Out here, we live as opposed to issue paperwork when they’re operating under old analysis. Out here, they didn’t issue that paperwork; the decision that they’re operating out here under is from 2017. So, they didn’t even do any new paperwork that says that their old analysis is appropriate and these sources have to come off. They just simply started removing them.
If (BLM) sits there, (like) “why is the program broken,” it’s because you’ve never even defined what it is that you’re managing. We kick the can down the road, and then the time comes where we have abuse like what you’re seeing out here at Antelope — the graphic and heart-pounding stuff that we see. Then the entire conversation goes into these peripheral debates that perpetuate kicking the can down the road.
What we have to do is we’ve got to start segmenting the program down, and then creating management planning all along the way. That’s the only way to fix it. Any mom and pop grocery store has a management plan. You know, just putting things on and off the shelf isn’t management — and now here, they just take stuff off the shelf.
And that analysis was specifically for the state of Nevada?
Specifically for the Triple (Basin) and Antelope complexes, but the land base we’re talking about is bigger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. Just the Antelope Complex is 1.4 million acres.
A lot of readers and people that don’t live in Nevada don’t understand how big this state is. Those are just two of the wild horse complexes in the state. You know, we’ve got 100 and — what, we’ve got 183 (herd management areas) in our state.
Do you have further specific examples that you’ve seen of these horses’ wellness being put in danger? Could you share some of those examples?
We post daily updates (on our website). There have been unsafe trap locations where there’s a lot of barbed wire from equipment for livestock turnout; horses went out there and were literally flipped. You know, if you imagine racking up pool balls and then hitting them with that cue ball and everything flying all over the place, that’s kind of what happened out there.
Foals are being left behind. We’re watching drives that last over an hour where foals are just going, “I just can’t do this anymore,” and their bands are being driven off them. I mean, there’s no no need for this.
Where do I stop describing the things that we’re seeing, right? Then on top of it, within the last seven days, BLM ran the helicopter on six of those days — 702 horses, on those days, from three trap locations. Two of the trap locations, the public has been denied observation, so they’re also starting out here. When the media attention gets hot, they spend more time trying to hide what they’re doing than to fix what they’re doing.
Give us a brief timeline about the activism you’ve done recently in regard to protecting Nevada’s wild horses?
Blue Wing Complex in Northern Nevada is an amazing burro territory. There are large burros up there, paint burros — which are very rare — and white burros — which are also very rare. BLM, on its 2 million acres, says less than 100 burros can live out there. BLM has never updated how they manage burros, and still use the same methods and breeding seasons and everything that they do for horses. Burros aren’t horses, so we’re in court on that one with two other organizations.
We’re fighting in Pancake (Complex), where BLM has no management plan, only a removal plan. So we have litigation there. There’s a couple of upcoming roundups of Stone Cabin (Complex), which is just outside of Tonopah, and Roberts Mountain (Complex). We’re actually trying to get them to do management planning out there instead of just removal plans, so it’s kind of a lot of the same.
BLM is mandated to manage, but instead they create removal plans. Removal is an option of management, removal is not management, and so we’re trying to get that full management planning that includes habitat preservation.
What sparked your interest in wild horses?
I’ve had horses on and off all my life. My father was a police officer, (and) my first horse was a big old Cleveland bay that I mucked before and after school. So that relationship developed early. I don’t know if you’ve ever known horses that way, but they’re pretty amazing.
I had interest in wild horses; I was rehabbing draft horses that would go into the slaughter pipeline. I was pulling draft horses, and I met an old mustang at a kill pen, and they wouldn’t let me buy him. It kind of blew my mind that something could be born free, serve man all his life — that mustang, they told me, had been a camp horse at a girls camp — and then he was dumped for slaughter. So, I started writing about mustangs.
Life opened up and I was doing some work for Horseback Magazine, it (was) just a little magazine that used to be available in feed stores — they’re not published anymore. One of the things I was doing was a wild horse roundup, and at that first roundup, I saw a foal and his feet were literally run off. It was kind of like it was waiting for me to step into, and I stepped into it and it took off. None of this is planned. Saw my first roundup and I went “OK, this is it; this is wrong; this is really wrong,” and I haven’t left.
And so, here’s where that kind of despair comes back in my voice. That foal’s feet fell off because he was run so hard while he was too young. Why am I fighting to have a conversation about how to prevent that kind of injury today still? And why does it have to even go to a courtroom? It’s so heartbreaking.
