This isn’t “balance.” It’s mass removal.

The following is from the American Wild Horse Conservation:

I wish I were writing to you with better news.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has just approved plans for a massive roundup in Nevada’s Callaghan Complex — one of the last great strongholds for wild horses in the West.

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. But this is not a fight we can take on alone. To stop this plan, we need a united community behind us — and we urgently need to fuel our Legal Fund with whatever you’re able to give today.

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This decision is built on outdated population targets that were set decades ago — before climate change, before modern ecological science, and without meaningful updates to reflect current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. 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.

I refuse to accept that as “management.” And I know you won’t either, Meredith.

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. But we can only move as fast and as forcefully as our supporters make possible.

Your support powers our legal work, on-the-ground advocacy, and the fight to replace mass removals with humane, science-based solutions that actually keep wild horses wild. A gift to our Legal Fund today will help power the next phase of this fight as we work to halt this devastating plan.

This is the moment we either draw the line for wild horses — or allow their disappearance from these lands to become permanent. If we stand together now, we can still change what happens next.

With determination,

Patricia Miller
Board Chair
American Wild Horse Conservation