horses
On Saturday, August 22, wild horse supporters staged a protest at Washoe Lake State Park.
From the photos posted on Nextdoor there was a large turnout of supporters of our wild or feral horse* population.
Locally, the BLM has a plan in place to build a fence to prevent horse movement between the hills and Washoe Lakes and wetlands as described in this southwashoe.com article.
An excellent article explains the local issues, history and wild horse dilemma from carsonnow.org. It is highly suggested reading for a comprehensive explanation.
Nationally, other states like Colorado and New Mexico are having similar conflicts between managing the herds and horse supporters.
The New York Times (paywall) reports that while BLM says its focus is to provide good homes to captured horses and burros, there are loopholes around it. For instance, horses can be bought for as little as $25 in bulk and resold in Canada where they can be slaughtered.
From the article: "Then the federal government rounded them up with helicopters, as it has with tens of thousands of other mustangs, in an attempt to control wild populations on public lands. The horses were held for years in a feed lot in Idaho while the government tried to find them what it called “loving homes.”
Abruptly this March, the government found a home. Whether it was loving didn’t seem to matter.
The horses were packed into echoing metal trailers and trucked 1,800 miles east to the pens of a hard-luck livestock trader in Ohio named Brandon Jones, who bought them for $25 each.
A day later, two double-decker cattle trucks pulled up at midnight, loaded the mustangs and quickly drove off into the night."
"The U.S. government’s sales of wild horses were once rare, but started to rise after President Trump took office. In 2025, they more than doubled to 3,700 horses, according to bureau records.
In that time, the bureau has sent about 500 horses to Mr. Jones. They came from all over the West — the windswept ridges of Cedar Mountain in Utah, the canyons of the Clan Alpine wilderness in Nevada, the high meadows of Twin Peaks, Calif., and the carved red rock hoodoos of Adobe Town, Wyo.
In an interview, Mr. Jones said he was able to resell the horses quickly though he didn’t advertise online or even post a FOR SALE sign at his corral. He would not say where the horses went and denied selling any to slaughter.
By the Numbers: The article goes on to state that capturing each horse can cost the government up to $3,000 while they can be sold for as little as $25 and fetch $750 upon resale in Canada.
The Farm Bill backed by the GOP also included a measure that could be used to prevent states from banning the sale of hose meat further placing wild horses in danger.
From the article: "It bars states from regulating the sale of all meat from 'covered livestock' based on how it was produced elsewhere," wrote Bollard. "Horses raised for slaughter fit the bill's definition of 'covered livestock'. So its plain text would force states to allow horse meat sales, invalidating bans like Texas's — on the books since 1949."
Editors Note: *Whether wild, feral, estray, native or other terms are used, we will use the phrase "Wild Horse" to refer to any horses living on the open range."
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