AWHC says, ‘This isn’t balance, it’s removal.’
The Bureau of Land Management just approved plans for a massive roundup in Nevada’s Callaghan Complex — one of the last great strongholds for wild horses in the West, according to a statement by Patricia Miller board chair of American Wild Horse Conservation.
If carried out, this operation would remove nearly 5,000 wild horses from more than a million acres of public lands — pushing thousands of animals into government holding facilities and leaving only a fraction of the herds behind.
Families will be broken apart. Entire bands will disappear from landscapes they’ve lived on for generations.
Wild horses at the Litchfield Corral.The BLM claims this plan is about “balance.” But when you look closely, the story changes
This decision is built on outdated population targets that were set decades ago — before climate change, before modern ecological science, and without meaningful updates to reflect current conditions on the range. Their own monitoring fails to distinguish between the impacts of livestock grazing and wild horses on fragile habitat, yet wild horses are once again being singled out for removal while commercial livestock grazing continues.
Even more troubling: The BLM is proposing to remove thousands of horses before meaningfully deploying humane fertility control at scale — despite clear evidence that fertility control works when implemented seriously.
These captured wild horses wait to be transported to a BLM facility.This is not a last resort. It is a default to mass removal — a costly pipeline to overcrowded holding facilities where these innocent animals will live out their lives in captivity or be sent to slaughter.
American Wild Horse Conservation is preparing to challenge this decision and escalate pressure on the agency — in the courts, in Washington, and in the public eye.
According to a statement from the American Wild Horse Campaign, this palomino mare, far right, and her newborn foal were herded and “appeared exhausted” during a BLM helicopter gather. The helicopter continued to push the horses toward the trap, and the mare went down. A few minutes later, her body was trucked away. Photo by AWHC
