Bureau of Land Management via AP
This undated photo provided by the Bureau of Land Management shows a group of wild horses during a summer aerial survey in northern Nevada. Federal officials plan to begin a roundup around Dec. 28, 2023, that will include herds roaming public land in four Nevada counties.
Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The ongoing wild horse roundup in rural Northern Nevada is planned to be what is likely the single largest gather conducted by the federal government.
The Bureau of Land Management plans to gather and remove 2,875 mustangs from what the agency calls the East Pershing Complex. The roundup started Dec. 28, and as of Jan. 3, had netted 733 animals using low-flying helicopters and wranglers to drive the feral horses toward traps, according to BLM reports. The operation could last through February.
At roughly 3,400 square miles, the complex — which is mostly in Pershing County and reaches into Humboldt, Churchill and Lander counties — covers more than twice as much ground as Rhode Island. A BLM estimate assumed about 1,850 horses in the area as of 2018, but the population would be considerably larger now; land managers follow the rule of thumb that wild horse herds, left unchecked by roundups and with few predators, can double in size every four years. Even after this roundup, about 620 horses could remain, the agency said.
The BLM says 345 to 555 of the horses are appropriate for the area, balancing the needs of other plant and animal species. Both wildlife and domestic livestock — notably sage grouse, bighorn sheep, mule deer and pronghorn antelope — roam this area within the complex’s boundaries.
According to the BLM’s tentative roundup schedule for fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, the agency planned 33 gathers — most for horses, and some for wild burros — throughout the West. Fifteen of the roundups are in Nevada. All but six of the gathers agencywide will utilize helicopters; the rest will use baited traps.
U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who frequently advocates in Congress on behalf of wild horses, panned the plan.
“Any increased use of helicopters to round up and house wild horses in already cramped pens will lead to hundreds of deaths for these iconic creatures,” she posted to X, formerly Twitter, in December. “(The BLM’s) plan to expand the gathering of horses next year is deeply troubling, and I urge them to reconsider their approach.”
If the BLM hits all its estimated targets, it will remove 19,870 wild horses and burros from the range in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming during fiscal 2024. Another 1,320 animals were set to receive long-acting fertility control and be returned to the range; most of those receiving birth control treatment are outside Nevada.
Last year’s nationwide roundup plan called for the removal of 5,923 animals total. The 2022 plan called for up to 21,208 animals to be removed, although that aside, the total number of proposed removals has been on the rise, according to historical roundup plans.
A planned roundup in Wyoming in the summer may come close to the scope of the East Pershing gather, with 2,766 horses to be removed from a complex outside of Lander.
Prior to that, a review of annual roundup schedules shows none with more than 2,875 proposed removals. In fiscal 2023, the BLM proposed removing 2,000 horses in the northern half of the Antelope complex, outside Elko. In fiscal 2022, it proposed removing 2,049 from herds in southern Wyoming and 2,030 from the Pancake complex outside Ely. In fiscal 2021, the agency planned to take 2,726 horses off the range from a complex in central Wyoming. A missing dataset on the BLM website for fiscal 2017 interrupts the BLM’s otherwise complete, detailed horse and burro roundup data, but an aggregated total of removals for that year showed 3,735 horses were removed nationwide.
Nonprofit animal welfare groups also closely watch the roundups. The
California-based American Wild Horse Campaign has had observers on-site at East Pershing, and this past week it released video showing cowboys — contracted livestock handlers — confining horses in close quarters. The clip shows one agitated adult horse jolting back and forth, rearing against the trap and bowling over a foal.
The American Wild Horse Campaign said the animals — offspring of long-ago escaped or turned-out ranch or pack animals — were being abused.
“This shocking display of cruelty is a continuation of the very abuses that gave rise to the original 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. These practices should be relegated to the past where they belong and should be replaced by modern, humane conservation practices that keep wild horses wild,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign.
The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act guides the federal roundups.
“The BLM strives to be a good neighbor in the communities we serve; ensuring public safety within and outside of the (herd management areas) is not at risk due to the overpopulation of wild horses and providing opportunities for other wildlife to have a thriving ecosystem,” the BLM wrote in a Q&A for the East Pershing Complex gather. “The purpose of the gather is critical to prevent undue or unnecessary degradation of the public lands associated with excess wild horses, and to restore a thriving natural ecological balance and multiple-use relationship on public lands,” consistent with the guiding law.
Horses gathered from the East Pershing Complex initially will be sent to corrals near Winnemucca. They will be prepared for the BLM’s adoption and sales programs, or sent to long-term holding facilities in pastures, which are mostly in the Midwest.
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