LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., has called for a halt to wild horse roundups currently being conducted in Nevada and elsewhere until the agency justifies this year’s roundup plan.
In a letter sent this week, Titus pointed to the absence of fertility control plans and continued “cruel use of helicopters” as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rounds up wild horses — primarily on public lands in Nevada.
Titus provided a link to a document that shows 15 of 32 roundups planned from Oct. 1, 2023, to Oct. 31, 2024, are in Nevada with targets of gathering more than 11,000. That’s nearly double the number of wild horses and burros gathered in Nevada the previous fiscal year, according to Tutus. And including the planned operations in other states, it’s triple.
One roundup that began in Northern Nevada in late December has a target of gathering 2,875 horses from the East Pershing Complex, between Winnemucca and Lovelock along Interstate 80. So far, that operation has taken 1,817 horses off the range to be sent to an adoption center outside Winnemucca. And 20 horses have been put to death — three because of injuries during the roundup, and 17 for chronic physical conditions that would prevent them from surviving in the wild.