A Win at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals for Wild Horses and the Adobe Town Roundup

By Carol J. Walker

It has been a weeks of tremendous ups and downs. On July 15, the day the Adobe Town roundup started, I was driving and had pulled over to check my messages. There was an email from our attorney about our 10th Circuit Court of Appeals case. We won! I yelled and got out of the car and jumped up and down. Once I had time to read the court’s decision I relaxed things were not so clear cut. 

The central part of the decision is that the Bureau of Land Management acted arbitrarily and capriciously in following its plan to zero out Great Divide Basin, Salt Wells Creek and almost half of Adobe Town on almost 2 million acres of public lands. The court found that they violated federal law by failing to consider a key part of the 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act that requires them to manage wild horses as part of a thriving natural ecological balance on our public lands.

The court reversed and remanded the decision back to the lower district court to rehear or settle. This leaves room for the BLM to attempt to revise and reinstate their plan. It will likely be end of this year or early 2026 before it is heard in the district court. The lawsuit was brought by American Wild Horses Campaign, Animal Welfare Institute, Western Watersheds Project, Kimerlee Curyl, Chad Hanson and me, Carol Walker.

So what does this mean for the roundups? The roundup currently going on in the portion of Adobe Town Herd Management Area that was not changed into a Herd Area not managed for wild horses, about 380,000 acres, is not affected by this ruling. This roundup is to bring the herd down to low Appropriate Management Level which 259 wild horses. The BLM claims that there are 1675 horses over AML and I don’t believe the number is that high. Adobe Town was the epicenter of the horrific winter of 2022-2023 which killed likely half the herd. 

There is another roundup on the schedule – the Salt Wells Creek and the portion of Adobe town contiguous to it that has also been turned into a Herd Area not managed for Wild horses. This roundup was scheduled to start August 25 and it is a roundup to zero out these herds – to take all the horses. Now you might say as many people have why are they going ahead with the roundup if you won your case? The Environmental Assessment for the roundup was NOT reversed and remanded. We were waiting to find out what the BLM might do – staff at the roundup was closemouthed about this.
But we just got this excellent news from our attorney. The zero out roundup for Salt Wells Creek and the Rock Springs portion of Adobe Town has been postponed until October at the earliest. A delay is best for the horses and we hope that BLM will wait to do a roundup until the District Court rules.

In the meantime the Adobe Town roundup is still going on, is scheduled to continue until 8/15 and as of July 22, 684 wild horses have been captured, four have died, and the remaining number are being shipped: the mares to the BLM facility in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the facility at the prison in Cañon City, Colorado, and the stallions are being shipped to the private facility in Wheatland, Wyoming. 

You can follow the Daily Gather Report published by the BLM here: https://www.blm.gov/programs/wild-horse-and-burro/herd-management/gathers-and-removals/wyoming-high-desert-do/2025

I arrived at the meeting place at the Cowboys Inn in Baggs Wyoming at 5:45 am on July 17. We drove across the border to Colorado and drove on CR 4 to the southern way into Adobe Town, near Powder Wash. Apparently the BLM was very concerned about horses going over the border, out of their Herd Management Area, likely because of two good water sources there. We were also told a rancher had requested a roundup here. They captured 4 horses who were in Colorado before we arrived then another 20 horses in the area where the trap was before letting the public observers get in place to watch – instead we sat in our vehicles for an hour south of the trap. We finally were allowed to climb the very rocky hill to the top where we could see the run into the trap but not the trap itself. I learned that the contractor was Sampson Livestock. Prior to the 2021 and 2022 roundups, the Cattoors had been the only contractor performing helicopter roundups in Wyoming. They have a black helicopter – just one.

The first run I observed there were two grey stallions fighting in the back. There were absolutely gorgeous horses being chased in by the helicopter, not just greys who are so emblematic to Adobe Town but gorgeous roans and bays and buckskins and palominos. All of the horses looked to be in excellent condition and indeed we were told their body score was 5 on the Henneke scale, which is excellent. They were not lacking forage or water. A family of five horses was headed for the trap when their gorgeous strawberry roan stallion suddenly stumbled and flipped over – it was shocking to see. He scrambled up hastily and tried to lead his family away from the trap but the helicopter prevailed. 

One of the families that came in was led by a proud sorrel stallion who kept eyeing the jute wings of the trap like he wanted to jump it. They went into the trap but he jumped out. I spotted him running and whinnying to his family, who whinnied back. They could not follow him. And he would not leave. Two wranglers came out and tried to rope him but he kept moving away, but not far. Finally the helicopter came out and spent about 20 minutes chasing him, very close to him, and finally he went into the trap, but he would not be reunited with his family.

I went to temporary holding after a 2 1/2 hour wait we were allowed to go into the temporary holding facility where they were keeping the horses who had been captured. Unfortunately unlike the contractor Cattoor who puts a snow fence around the pens that at least allows glimpses of the horses, Sampson used heavy thick taps that did not allow us to see th horses. We saw one foal lying on the ground from looking underneath, we could hear the foals whinnying to their mothers, but we could not see them, including the foal who the BLM said had been kicked but was now just fine. My friend asked if we could go up on a small rise and we were allowed to, and could see the heads of stallions and some of the mares but not the foals. Two grey mares were cuddled close for comfort. There were brief scuffles with the stallions but no real fighting which was amazing given how tightly packed together they were in those pens. 

The next day we met at the same location but an hour earlier at 4:50 am. The terrain in this area is completely different than in the rest of the Adobe Town HMA. There are many trees – conifers primarily, rocky hills and formations, rolling hills and sagebrush. 

I asked the BLM today if a count would be done at the end of the roundup to ensure that they did not take the herd below the low Appropriate Management Level of 259 as was done to the White Mountain Herd in August 2024. He said he did not know and would get back to me. He has not done so yet. 

In the first run of the day over 41 horses came in steadily, not running. The colors of these horses are so beautiful, and like Adobe Town horses do, they tried to keep their families separated. This herd is not like Salt Wells Creek, grouping up together in large numbers. As the day goes on trailers are loaded with captured horses, we can see the trailers leaving but not being loaded, and another member of the public notices that a grey stallion is down in the back of one of the trailers. We tell BLM staff who radios down and they bring the trailer back and get the stallion up. It would be a long ride where he could not get up and would possibly be trampled, so I was glad they got him up. 

There was a group of about 40 horses but 9 split off and ran up the hill and so the helicopter brought the bigger group in. They were very sweaty which really shows up on grey horses. The helicopter went out for a very long time and finally got the missing 9 horses that had pealed off – they were extremely sweaty. At the end of the last run we returned to our vehicles and were kept waiting for 2 hours before we were allowed to leave.

The next day when we again met at 4:50 at the cowboy Inn I was surprised to hear we were going back to the same location. They are clearly determined to get every single horse in this area that I believe had not been rounded up since 2017 when I was there. 

This makes me even more concerned about taking so many horses from one location. Are they going to leave less than 100 horses in the whole herd despite the fact that they not supposed to take the herd below the low aml of 259? 

There are more roans in this area than I have seen in a decade. There are valuable genetics that will be lost in the casual cruelty of “getting them all” in an area. There were mainly families here with just a handful of bachelors which leads me to believe this might be a pocket that escaped the worst of the killer winter. Areas north of here in the last two years I have observed had many bachelors and few families which makes sense as the mares are more likely to die in the harsh winter.

The group of 33 horses that come in try to stay separated by family, and have a stunning pale palomino stallion with a long mane in front. The BLM had told us there were riders out to help a pale foal if he had trouble coming in, yet there he was running with his mother at the end of the group. Then a small family,y with a pure white stallion with a long snowy mane who reluctantly followed his family into the trap. The last to be captured were two young bachelor stallions who ran very fast to escape the helicopter, but still finally were chased into the trap by the helicopter. 

Once we went to our vehicles we were told they were going to go back to this same area tomorrow which I found very concerning. They also went back Monday. And there were three deaths on Sunday and Monday after I left – a foal died of “capture myopathy” which is a fancy way to say they ran it to death, and two horses died in the trailers. Given how they stuffed those horses in there it should not be a surprise, yet it is a horrible reality with a contractor in a hurry who has no care for the well being of the horses they capture and transport. And July is a terrible time to roundup wild horses because of the heat and because yes it is still foaling season and I saw several foals that were only a couple of days old.

I left for home with a very heavy heart. So many incredibly beautiful horses who will never see their families again, most will never leave the holding facilities. 

Adobe Town is an area close to my heart. It is the first place I visited and fell in love with wild horses on my first trip out in 2004. I observed my first roundup there in 2005 and formed my determination to help save these wild horses. I wrote my first two books Wild Hoofbeats and Galloping to Freedom about the wild horses in this area and the situation facing them. I have been observing every roundup of this herd since then, dedicated to making sure the horses are treated as humanely as possible, I have been a plaintiff on many lawsuits to save this herd and others in the Checkerboard Area of Wyoming. The fight to save them is not over.