Scott Sonner / Associated Press
Wild horses stand behind a fence at the Bureau of Land Management’s holding facility in Palomino Valley, Nev. June 5, 2013. Wild horses throughout Nevada are being rounded up by federal land managers who say they’re preserving land and protecting herds while water and food sources become scarce. But some wild horse advocates want to do away with roundups, saying they waste resources and harm the horses.
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Nearly 1 in 20 wild horses sent to a federally contracted holding facility in Fallon after being rounded up from Bureau of Land Management rangelands died last year, according to agency data.
Of the 267 horses that died last year at the Indian Lakes Off-Range Wild Horse and Burro Corral, 106 were found dead in their pens for unknown reasons. This was by far the most commonly listed reason in a 2023 mortality report for the facility, first obtained by the American Wild Horse Conservation advocacy group.
The next most-given reasons were sudden or previously suffered neck and back fractures (30 deaths), cryptorchidism (30 deaths), and gelding complications (28 deaths). Cryptorchidism is when one or both testes in a male horse fail to descend and remain in the abdomen or groin. Gelding is the castration of males.
All males are castrated before the BLM offers them for private sale or adoption.
Indian Lakes is the largest off-range corral in the BLM system. According to bureau records, it had an average monthly horse population last year of 3,004 and has capacity for 7,600 animals. Horses are processed at such corrals after being gathered and before being auctioned or sold.
Data show that horses at the Fallon corral also died after suffering from broken legs, dental problems, eye abnormalities and blindness, club foot, lameness, other deformities and injuries, complications while giving birth, and cancer.
Some deaths were noted as sudden, while others were noted as being caused by chronic or previous conditions. Several had “body condition: unable to maintain or improve” as a cause of death. The horses ranged in age from foals and yearlings to about 26 years old.
“These records underscore the urgent crisis facing the 64,000 wild horses and burros currently confined within the BLM’s overburdened holding system,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of American Wild Horse Conservation, in a statement. “They serve as a stark warning about the dark realities of the agency’s roundup and removal program.”
American Wild Horse Conservation said gelding should be a low-risk procedure, while other infirmities, like partial blindness, don’t warrant euthanasia.
U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who frequently advocates in Congress on behalf of wild horses and burros, said in a statement that the data “revealed disturbing details of BLM’s inhumane management of wild horses.”
“This is completely unacceptable treatment of these icons of the West, and I remain committed to ending the mass captivity of wild horses in Nevada,” said Titus, who has consistently scrutinized the BLM’s population control methods and spending. She has also sponsored bills to end helicopter-guided roundups and to use fertility-control vaccinations in more horses left in the wild instead of removing them.
Through a spokeswoman, the BLM said the Indian Lakes corral’s mortality rate last year was 4.5% — while there is an average on-site population of about 3,000 horses, which the American Wild Horse Conservation used to calculate a mortality rate of about 9%. The BLM said 5,962 unique animals passed through the facility last year.
Last year’s mortality rate at Indian Lakes is in line with the findings of a 2008 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that from 2003 to 2007, the BLM’s off-range corrals saw mortality rates of about 5%.
“The agency makes every effort to ensure that Off-Range Corral operations are conducted in a humane manner while dealing with wild animals,” said Jenny Lesieutre, a public affairs specialist for the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program in Nevada. “Every person does not want to experience any loss of life; unfortunately, it is not realistic to have all off-range corral operations at a 100% without potential mortalities or injuries.”
The BLM has 29 off-range corrals in 14 states. Nevada has four of those corrals — in Fallon, Winnemucca, Carson City and Reno — and they are among the largest in the BLM.
Between the short-term corrals and long-term pastures for animals that fail to sell or adopt out, the system has a grand total capacity of about 83,000 animals, agency records show. Up to 15,450 of those animals can be contained in Nevada.
BLM data show that most of the horses on land the agency manages roam in Nevada. Like wild burros, they are the feral offspring of long-ago escaped or turned-out ranch or pack animals. Land managers follow the rule of thumb that wild horse herds, if left unchecked by roundups and with few predators, can double in size every four years — putting unsustainable demands on the ecosystem and putting the horses at risk of starvation and dehydration.
The BLM is currently gathering horses in Lincoln County, northeast of Las Vegas, and around Red Rock Canyon.
The Red Rock Herd Management Area encompasses 157,443 acres of BLM land about 20 miles west of Las Vegas. Management levels in the area call for 16 to 27 wild horses and 29 to 49 wild burros, officials said.
The area had 114 wild horses and 191 wild burros as of the March population count.
This will be the first roundup at the Red Rock Herd Management Area since 2019, officials said.
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