The following opinion piece is a community submission and doesn’t reflect the opinion of TRN Media, which encompasses SweetwaterNOW and The Radio Network. 

Submitted by Madhu Anderson

Regardless of political affiliation — Republican, Democrat, Independent, or even if you don’t support wild horses on public lands — most of us agree on one thing: the Bureau of Land Management must treat animals humanely. Yet BLM continues to violate its own welfare standards. 

Starting Aug. 25, BLM plans to remove all wild horses — including newborn foals(baby horses) and heavily pregnant mares — from Salt Wells Creek and reduce the Northwest Adobe Town herd by 60%. In response, Wyoming Wildlife Protection Group and other horse advocates will hold a peaceful rally in Rock Springs on July 10. 

In the 2024 White Mountain roundup, the BLM captured 109 foals; over half of all reported  deaths were foals.On-site, I witnessed exhausted foals lagging, stallions fighting in overcrowded pens, and panicked horses crashing into panels. When I raised concerns, BLM officials Jay D’Ewart (Wild Horse and Burro Specialist) and Spencer Allred (Rangeland Specialist) cited compliance with the agency’s Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) — a policy I later  learned isn’t transparent or enforceable.

Foals are very fragile, needing warmth and frequent nursing in their first month, and leg injuries in the first three months can be deadly or cause lasting harm. BLM doesn’t use data to define foaling season and instead applies a uniform West-wide period from March through June without site-specific research. BLM has used PZP (a fertility drug) in Salt Wells Creek since 2010 but never collected data on whether it has extended foaling timing. Despite the prohibition against helicopter roundups during foaling or for heavily pregnant mares, BLM continues them. Moreover, during the 2024 Blue Wing roundup (NV), a wrangler was filmed kicking a horse in the head, and animals died from heat, trauma, and neglect. Yet BLM’s Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) team gave this roundup a 99% “excellent” rating. How can the BLM-employed CAWP team that oversees BLM-conducted roundups decide what is humane and review its own staff?

The CAWP team must be disbanded and replaced by independent experts with no agency ties. BLM says wild horses in the upcoming Salt Wells Creek and Adobe Town roundup areas are healthy, with adequate food, water, cover, and no diseases. However, roundups cause overcrowding in holding facilities, raising disease risk. In 2022, major outbreaks occurred: 145 horses died in the Cañon City facility, Colorado, and at the Wheatland facility in Wyoming, 75% of 3,000 horses contracted strangles, resulting in 19 deaths. Yet BLM keeps removing healthy horses and crowding them into pens. 

We demand a concise, transparent, and enforceable animal welfare policy with accountability and penalties for contractors and staff who violate BLM rules. The process must include public participation through comments — BLM has never held a public comment period for its existing welfare policy. Currently, welfare and euthanasia policies allow the officials in charge of the operation to decide on how animals can be handled and which animals can be euthanised, even for non lethal conditions like blindness in one eye, arthritis, or clubbed feet. This won’t change without enforceable rules. 

There are many reasons to join the peaceful rally — whether opposing BLM’s plan to remove tourism-supporting wild horses, protecting rare curly-coated horses, supporting land swaps over removals, rejecting unscientific AML, demanding an HMAP and a response to the May 6, 2025, motorized vehicle hearing, or condemning waste of taxpayer money. Choose your  reason — make your voice heard. 

Join us July 10 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. outside the BLM Rock Springs office, and 1–3 p.m. at Dewar Drive and Gateway Boulevard.