AWHC Urges Camera Installation During Federal Wild Horse Roundups At 2025 Advisory Board Meeting

Team AWHC spoke at the 2025 Bureau of Land Management Advisory Board meeting. Caylyn Mira, Grassroots Advocacy & Campaigns Manager, called for the installment of cameras on helicopters and wranglers as a way to increase transparency and accountability during federal roundups.

Good Afternoon, my name is Caylyn Mira. I am the Grassroots Advocacy & Campaigns Manager with the American Wild Horse Conservation. For the past several decades, wild horses & burros have been inhumanely rounded up through costly and traumatic helicopter chases. But the devastation doesn’t stop there and continues to occur in holding facilities and kill pens. Despite recommendations from Congress and the National Academy of Science, the BLM continues to snowball down a counterproductive path, costing the lives of these animals. 

While AWHC pushes for the halt of helicopter roundups, we also recognize the need for transparency during roundups as they are the current primary method of management. So today, I ask that you recommend the BLM & US Forest Service install and use cameras on every helicopter and every wrangler during operations. 

The need for cameras was best exemplified this year.  At the Twin Peaks roundup, a stallion flipped over the panels to escape, nearly crushing a wrangler. A black stallion was chased for miles during the Triple B roundup and when he could no longer run, wranglers proceeded to rope him and push him past his limits leading him to collapse and he was eventually euthanized an hour later due to “acute intestinal compromise.” During the Blue Wing Complex roundup, a horse collapsed from exhaustion to then be hit, kicked, and yanked on by the wranglers. Despite this incident, the roundup received a 99% for the CAWP Assessment. 

Not to mention that the roundup process has increasingly become less and less transparent to taxpayers and advocates, placing public observation sites more than a mile away from the trap site with obstructed views and multiple restrictions. This fails to allow proper public oversight and accountability. 

In order to bring more transparency to the federal process, once again, we ask that you recommend installing cameras on every helicopter and every wrangler during roundups and make those recordings publicly available to ensure proper handling of horses and burros and create independent oversight. The public also continues to push this initiative with over 64,000 actions calling for camera installation on helicopters and wranglers. 

The humane treatment of our wild horses and burros has always been a priority and should continue to be for the next several decades. By installing and using cameras on helicopters and wranglers, it will be the first step towards creating public trust and ensuring humane treatment of our horses and burros. Thank you for your time.