One of the most powerful ways we fight to protect wild horses and burros is through the courts. Litigation is often the last line of defense against threats to their freedom, safety, and habitats.
Whether it’s blocking dangerous government policies or standing up to groups trying to remove wild horses from public lands, our legal efforts are essential to keeping these iconic animals wild and free. One recent victory we’re especially proud of is our work to defend the Salt River wild horses in Arizona.
Over the last two years, alongside our partners at the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, we’ve faced off against the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) in federal court. CBD has repeatedly filed lawsuits aimed at removing this cherished herd from the Tonto National Forest, based on their erroneous belief that wild horses are an “invasive species.” In its most recent legal maneuver, the organization alleged that the horses’ population could harm three endangered bird species, despite clear evidence that AWHC provided to the Court, which shows the Salt River herd’s habitat is located miles away from critical areas for these species.
Thanks to the dedication of our legal team and our partners at the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, the federal court rejected CBD’s claims and upheld its dismissal of its baseless lawsuit!
This victory was made possible by AWHC supporters like you. Here’s how your contributions helped us achieve this win:
Expert Legal Advocacy: Our legal team, led by Randall Weiner, filed a critical friend-of-the-court brief to expose the flaws in CBD’s claims.
Scientific Evidence: AWHC’s Utah Conservation Manager, Tandin Chapman, provided detailed mapping work to prove the Salt River horses are not impacting endangered species’ habitats.
Partnership in Action: We worked closely with the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group to ensure these cherished horses remain safe and free.
This victory wasn’t just about one herd — it was a win for all wild horses and burros. It demonstrated the importance of using facts, science, and the law to protect our beloved herds from unfounded attacks. But this was just one of many fights to come.
Every year, we face new legal battles to protect wild horses and burros from roundups, removals, and policies that threaten their very existence. These efforts require significant resources, and that’s where you come in.
Right now, thanks to a generous donor, we have a $100,000 match opportunity for our end-of-year fundraising campaign — but we need to raise an initial $30,000 to unlock this incredible match, and we’re just halfway there.
Last week, our partner, the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group (SRWHMG), alerted us to 28 historic Alpine wild horses who were removed from the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest and landed in the Cleburne Livestock Sale, a notorious slaughter auction.
We knew we had to help SRWHMG save these iconic horses. So, thanks to our rescue fund, AWHC was able to donate $10,000 directly toward saving the Alpine wild horses from slaughter.
We’re grateful to support boots-on-the-ground rescue missions like this one — and none of it would be possible without advocates like you.
Your generous support of our fund is what makes our rescue work possible. That’s why we need your help to ensure we have the funds to support our partners in rescuing wild horses and burros from slaughter.
While February may be the shortest month of the year, we made the most of each and every day, organizing a handful of national efforts to protect America’s wild horses and burros.
The numbers speak for themselves:
A Show Of Force In Support Of Arizona’s Famed Salt River Horses
Five years ago, AWHC joined up with our local coalition partner the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group to prevent the mass roundup, removal, and slaughter of the famed Salt River wild horses in Arizona.
The year after, our groups worked successfully for the passage of a state law to protect these horses in their historic habitat. But now, the future of the Salt River wild horses is in jeopardy once more.
A new state bill, HB 2858, seeks to amend the Salt River horse protection bill. As currently written, the bill would block lifesaving interventions that are necessary to save horses and safeguard the herd.
The legislation is currently in the House Rules Committee after passing in the Land & Agriculture Committee. State legislators, such as the Land & Agriculture Committee chair Rep. Timothy Dunn, have acknowledged that the bill’s language must be updated to address our concerns before bringing it for a full vote. This week, the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Jay Lawrence, withdrew his support for HB 2858 after sponsor Rep. Kelly Townsend refused to amend it to ensure that humane management will continue to be allowed.
At the same time, momentum is building behind the petition launched by the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group and AWHC to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in support of a wildlife overpass, which would help ensure the safety and well-being of the Salt River horses: It’s already exceeded our goal of gathering 20,000 signatures!
Joining Forces To Prevent A Dangerous New Precedent In Utah
Photo by Rob Hammer.
This month, the BLM outlined a ten-year plan that would dramatically reduce the wild horse population in the Swasey HMA in Utah, down to as few as 60 horses.
The scary part is, the BLM is hoping to use this plan to establish a new precedent for wild horse population management for years and Administrations to come: One that relies on cruel roundups as well as dangerous surgical sterilization procedures.
Some of these procedures have not even been developed yet, let alone safety tested. Others — such as the cruel ovariectomy via colpotomy procedure that the BLM has been pushing for years — have been criticized by the National Academy of Sciences and veterinarians as too dangerous to perform in wild horses.
The BLM is not considering reductions to the number of privately-owned livestock in the area, further demonstrating that the BLM is more invested in defending the interests of the livestock industry than those of our wild horses and burros.
AWHC joined forces with the Animal Welfare Institute and The Cloud Foundation to submit 33-pages of public comments opposing this plan, including 13,800 of your signatures in a major show of force.
Nearly 70% Of Wild Horses Removed From Nevada’s Eagle Complex
Beginning in mid-January, the BLM began a massive roundup in Nevada’s 743,000-acre Eagle Complex.
When the roundup concluded in late February, 1,716 of the Complex’s 2,484 wild horses were forcibly removed; including 24 reported fatalities. Of those, over 1,600, or roughly 70% of the wild horses in the Eagle Complex, were permanently removed.
The BLM has set the Appropriate Management Level (AML) for the Eagle Complex at 139-265 wild horses, a number not supported by science, as the BLM continues its practice of imposing absurdly low population limits for wild horses in order to continue to allocate the vast majority of forage in wild horse habitat to subsidized livestock.
Roundup Slashes Size of Reveille Wild Horse Herd In Half
Another roundup in Nevada concluded this month — The Reveille Roundup resulted in the removal of 113 wild horses from public lands, equating to more than half of the wild horse population in the Reveille HMA.
Often times, our field representatives are the only members of the public onsite to view the roundup operation and ensure the BLM is in compliance with federal law and abiding by animal welfare guidelines. Without them present, it would be incredibly difficult, if not downright impossible, to hold the BLM accountable and report wrongdoing.
As in other areas, the BLM is continually rounding up wild horses in the Reveille HMA so that the public lands there can be primarily used for commercial livestock grazing. In fact, the annual equivalent of 2,000 cow/calf pairs graze a 650,000-acre livestock allotment that overlaps a portion of this HMA, while horse numbers are held at just 82-138.
There is good news out of this HMA, however. The BLM Battle Mountain District has been utilizing fertility control periodically in this herd, and it appears to have reduced the population’s growth rate, which will, in turn, reduce the number of wild horses removed in the future.
Start The Weekend On A Positive Note
Operation Fish Springs Rescue is complete! Over 140,000 of you signed a petition to the BLM to bring Samson and his family home, after the agency trapped and removed them over Thanksgiving weekend last year. Subsequent to launching the petition, advocates learned that the BLM had taken three other bands of beloved Fish Springs horses – those belonging to the stallions Rusty and Rocky and one recently acquired by the famous blue roan stallion Shadow.
Unfortunately, the BLM would not return these horses to their home on our public lands in Nevada, but thanks to a team effort, all of these horses have found a safe landing where they will stay together in their bands.
AWHC was pleased to play a key role in the rescue by taking responsibility for Rocky’s band (Rocky, Copper, Elisa, Luna and Luna’s son Jimmy) and Rusty’s band (Amber, Cinnamon, Belle and Belle’s son Luke) and Shadow, whom BLM would only adopt to a sanctuary after he was deemed “dangerous” following a fight with Rocky in the holding pen.
We are so grateful to AWHC board member Alicia Goetz whose Freedom Reigns Equine Sanctuary is providing a lifetime home for these horses, and to our Board President Ellie Price, whose team at Montgomery Creek Ranch, her mustang refuge, purchased Rocky’s band in the BLM online auction. Ensuring that 11 horses were secured in the BLM’s auction was no easy feat, but working together we got the job done!
Our team put together some of the most striking photos from this past month – ones that made us smile, and others that remind us why we work so hard to protect these icons every day.
Mustangs in their winter coats on the Virginia Range in Nevada, where our fertility control program is in its tenth month with over 830 wild mares inoculated with the PZP vaccine. Learn more about our program here.
AWHC joined with the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group this month to advocate for construction of a wildlife overpass for the famed Salt River wild horses in AZ. Learn more here.
Friend of AWHC and photographer, Mary Hone captured a series of photos of a wild burro youngster living her best life out on our public lands in California. Check out the series here. (Credit: Mary Hone Fine Art).
Just captured wild horses from the Eagle Herd Management Area in Nevada arrive at BLM holding pens in good body condition, despite winter conditions and BLM claims of overpopulation and starvation. Read more here.
Wild horses have long been misrepresented as a non-native invasive species, but respected scientists are working to change that narrative. Learn more about wild horses as a native species here.
If you thought the famed Salt River wild horses were protected, think again. In 2017, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed legislation that protects the Salt River wild horses in their historic habitat in the Tonto National Forest near Phoenix.
But now this cherished herd is threatened by new plans that could result in severe habitat loss and removals of these horses from their home along the lower Salt River.
The Issue: The U.S. Forest Service is beginning construction of a metal fence along the last four miles of the Lower Salt River, including across the river itself. The fence would trap horses on either side, blocking access to the river – a critical source of hydration — and to grazing grounds on both sides of the river.
At the same time, the Arizona Department of Agriculture is considering several proposed long-term management plans for the horses. Depending on which plan is chosen, the horses could face large-scale removals and a severe reduction in their habitat.
The Stakes: Working together with our coalition partner the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, we saved the Salt River wild horses from a mass roundup/eradication plan almost 5 years ago. Now the future of this iconic herd is again in jeopardy and their future is far from assured!
Five Things You Can Do Today:
The Salt River wild horses need your voice now! Click on the image for each step and you will be directed to a page that will guide you on how to help.
The BLM is accepting public comments on a Draft Resource Management Plan (RMP) that will affect a small herd of wild horses living in the Four Mile Herd Management Area in southwestern Idaho, near the Oregon border for the next 10-20 years. Among the management options under consideration for wild horses in the Four Mile mustangs are surgical removal of ovaries in mares and castration of stallions, vasectomy, PZP, GonaCon, skewed sex ratios, and the creation of non-reproducing herds. Now is the time to weigh in for humane and proven management options like PZP fertility control, and rejection of dangerous methods, like surgical sterilization and sex-ratio skewing, that will destroy the horses’ wild free roaming behaviors and social organization. Please take one moment to take action below.
The BLM is well into its summer/fall roundup season, aiming to remove 3,565 federally-protected wild horses from public lands through the fall. This month has seen three roundups conducted simultaneously in three different states — including one targeting the nation’s most high profile wild horse herd. AWHC has been onsite at all three roundups and you can read our reports from the field by clicking below.
Thanks to all the members of our herd who galloped to action last week to let the Senate know that the so-called Path Forward for wild horses — being pushed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, ASPCA, HSUS and Return to Freedom — will be a giant step back for these cherished national icons. Together we made our position known, loud and clear. Read more about the successful mini campaign below!
On Monday, May 15, AWHC Executive Director Suzanne Roy accompanied Salt River Wild Horse Management Group President Simone Netherlands to Window Rock, Arizona, the capitol of the Navajo Nation, to present information on humane wild horse management options. Also presenting at the meeting was Leland Grass (pictured at center above) of Dine’ for Wild Horses & Seminars. Leland is a prominent wild horse advocate and member of the Navajo nation. The Navajo face a complex problem of managing a large popultion of domestic, semi-feral and wild horses on the 18 million acre reservation. Officials from the Fish and Wildlife, Agriculture and Natural Resources divisions attended the meeting and were very welcoming toward us and the information we presented.
