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[horse neighs]
[hooves clopping]
[ethereal music]
[Yvette] I'll never forget the first time
that I saw a wild horse.
It was right at the edge of dawn,
when the sky was in that special shade between blue and purple.
And I thought, in that moment,
they looked like ghosts of the desert.
♪
It was a journey none of us expected to go on.
Encountering such extraordinary beauty...
and traversing the vast Western US.
We were searching for the answer to one question.
Why are wild horses disappearing?
[helicopter whirring]
At first, what we discovered sounded like a conspiracy...
until we realized it was.
[music fades]
Anyone who says magic is gone from the world
hasn't been in the wild with horses.
There's a famous quote
that I'd love for you to think about,
as we take you through this journey.
"We need the tonic of wildness.
We require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable.
That the land and the sea be indefinitely wild.
Unfathomed by us, because they are unfathomable.
We can never have enough of nature."
Most people don't know...
that wild horses even exist in our country.
Representing purity,
and power, and freedom.
We originally began this project
as a love letter to wild horses.
And to gather footage for a film
that I was directing at the time.
A modern-day retelling ofBlack Beauty.
It's little known that Anna C. Wells' classic
wasn't necessarily written as a children's book.
It was an animal welfare plea,
to protect the horses of her time.
Like most people, we had no idea
that wild horses were being rounded up in mass numbers,
taken away from their homes and their families...
put into government holding facilities,
never to gallop again.
[horses neighing]
So, after the credits rolled onBlack Beauty,
we decided to keep going.
But little did we know,
beyond the extraordinary beauty of wild horses,
they had an enemy.
One that was well-funded
and full of lies, deceit, and corruption.
We had no idea we were about to enter a war.
We just got to Delta.
We're not allowed to view the holding facility,
even though it's a BLM holding facility.
There's Kai, we've got officers,
I'm not sure what we're about to encounter.
The famous Onaqui Horses were just rounded up,
and they said that we couldn't come observe.
So, we came anyway.
The horses are just being unloaded from the trucks.
[horses neighing]
This is... [sighs]
...this is really hard to see.
[somber music]
[horses whinnying]
I think one of the worst things in doing all of this...
[helicopter whirring]
...was watching their freedom get taken away.
-Gosh, that sound is-- -[man 1] I know, it's terrible.
And we've been listening to it for hours now,
-for two hours, it's horrible. -[Yvette sighs]
And our question was...
why?
Why is this happening to wild horses?
Aren't they living symbols of America?
Aren't they supposed to be federally protected?
And if wild horses live on public land,
which they do...
...don't the people have a say?
[crowd chanting] Stop the choppers!
Isn't this our land?
[crowd chanting] Stop the choppers!
[Yvette] But before we go forward,
let's go back.
To understand where wild horses really came from,
and why they, like other species,
such as wolves, coyotes,
trout and sage-grouse,
are being scapegoated
and knowingly eradicated from our public lands.
Because unless we do something...
wild horses will disappear...
forever.
[Yvette speaking Indigenous language]
My name is Dr. Yvette Running Horse Collin
and I'm an Oglala Lakota researcher and scientist.
And I'm an administrator
for the He'Sapa Unity Alliance Council of Elders.
So, Western science and academia now agrees
that the horse originated in North America.
However, they say that all the horses died out
in North and South America during the last Ice Age,
which is around 13,000 to 11,000 years ago,
until Columbus reintroduced them
in the late 1400s.
Many, many, many species survived the Ice Age.
For example, the elk, the antelope,
of course, we had the wolf, the bear, the bison.
So, I find it very interesting,
why they would focus on the horse.
Contrary to what Western academia has put forward,
our people say, we always had the horse.
History is often told by the conqueror.
There were many accounts in the Spanish chronicles
of multiple quadrupeds, right, four-legged animals
everywhere, all over the place.
There were also accounts where Native peoples and horses
were reported as living together
in a domestic-type situation.
There is a great deal of fossil evidence
to prove that the horses
did not go extinct in the Americas
and that they indeed had a relationship
with different Native peoples.
This issue has not been properly scientifically researched.
What would happen...
if it's understood and widely accepted
that the horse survived the Ice Age?
And, in fact, some of that blood is still in the wild horses
that roam these lands today.
If the United States follows its own laws,
they would then be protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Not only would they be protected,
it also protects the lands that they call home.
They wouldn't be available for extraction, uh, for mining.
They would have to be kept pure
and allowed to live in balance.
[plane roaring faintly]
The wild horse war has been going on
for a long time.
In 1971, President Nixon stepped in to help.
The president had been moved
by the plight of wild horses and burros
after he received thousands of letters
sent in by children,
a campaign organized by Velma Johnson,
better known as "Wild Horse Annie."
The president opened his remarks on the bill
by quoting Henry David Thoreau.
"We need the tonic of wildness," he began.
Congress unanimously passed
the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.
Which stated that they should be protected
from capture, branding, harassment, and death.
It became starkly black and white to us
how much that law was being violated,
and how little had changed.
We did not embark on this
to become investigative reporters.
But we also refused to stand idly by,
after witnessing such antiquated cruelty
still happening today.
We very calmly asked and we said it is our right...
-Yep. Yeah. -...as journalists,
as public observers, to go over there
and point our camera--
And-- and we feel that for the safety of everybody,
and the coordination of this group,
we want to keep you here, so that's what we're gonna do.
[crewmember] A minute ago, it was for our safety,
now you're saying it's 'cause we're emotional.
[man] Well, emotion runs into that.
If people are getting emotional, how do you control people?
[birds chirping]
[Yvette] Today, wild horses are under attack,
perhaps more than ever before.
The law President Nixon championed
is being ignored.
And even worse,
the Bureau of Land Management is currently trying to reduce
wild horse populations down
to what President Nixon considered to be...
extinction level.
The president's policy contained one fatal flaw.
The Wild Horse and Burro Act grants
the Bureau of Land Management sole authority
to determine the amount of wild horses
that can roam free on public land.
Since 1971,
the BLM has set the appropriate amount to zero
in nearly 50% of herd management areas
initially protected at a federal level.
But to get to the bottom of all of this,
we felt like we needed to start with the horses.
We needed to go out into the wild.
[delicate music]
Our journey began in Utah,
with the famous Onaqui horses.
♪
You come to a place like this
and the horses are right off the road.
And that's probably why they're arguably
the most famous horses in the country.
The more time we spent with them...
we began to learn about their families.
There were the curious foals,
the watchful mothers...
the playful adolescents, and the bachelors.
There were stallions
that battled for mares and dominance...
[horses braying]
And the more quirky personalities.
It was clear how much they were just like us.
We got to know the rhythm of their lives
and how they had been given names,
like Stargazer and Moon Drinker.
The cremello and his best friend, the black.
The powerful bay roan who is very protective
over his mares, the perlino sisters.
There was one stallion with piercing blue eyes,
that someone called Norman, and the name stuck.
Norman was part of what's called bachelor band,
which means a group of young stallions
who hang out together.
His two best friends were Rowan and Rudy.
Our favorite family didn't have any names,
so we called the stallion, Wind Knot,
and his chestnut foal, Suncatcher.
When we first saw them, there were over 500 horses,
but the most famous proved elusive.
He was a legendary white stallion called Old Man.
The Gandalf of the mountains.
This place was like a fairytale.
And it was right here for all of us.
But only two months after we first visited them,
we found out the Onaqui were going to be rounded up, too.
We realized at that point,
as filmmakers, we had a duty to protect them.
Not only the Onaqui, but all wild horses.
But this issue has been going on for over 100 years.
How were we gonna make a difference?
As they usually did, the horses guided us.
Right to the good people that could help.
[Kimerlee] Hi, I'm Kimerlee Curyl,
and I am a wild horse photographer and advocate
for keeping our wild horses on our public lands.
[Erik] My name is Erik Molvar, I'm a wildlife biologist,
and I'm also the Executive Director
of Western Watersheds Project,
a conservation group dedicated to protecting
and restoring wildlife and watersheds
throughout the American West.
[Kimerlee] So, I've been coming out
to the Onaqui Range since 2000-- 2009.
But my first visit out here, of course,
was beyond magical and life-changing.
To drive out here,
I did not expect to be immersed in such a large herd of horses.
To walk amongst them,
feel like I became part of the herd that week.
And unfortunately, that fall, there was an "emergency roundup"
and they stripped these horses down to--
the last I read, was somewhere between 50 and 75,
and that was in 2009.
[Erik] Here we are in the-- in the middle of the Red Desert,
and it's one of the largest unfenced tracts of public land
anywhere remaining in North America.
The Red Desert is one of the real biological hot spots
in the American West.
One of the places where the ecosystems are healthiest,
where the biodiversity is greatest.
And this is an area that used to have
thousands and thousands of wild horses,
but has been subjected to heavy roundups
by the Bureau of Land Management,
and now, they're getting quite rare.
In the Western United States,
there are less than 100,000 wild horses.
There are two million cattle that are set loose
on Western Public Lands every year,
and who knows how many million sheep.
The Bureau of Land Management recently did an analysis
and determined that pretty much
all of the wild horse areas in the Red Desert
are meeting the thriving natural ecological balance
that's required by federal law.
And yet, the agency wants to take away
thousands of these horses,
even though the land is in great shape.
[Kimerlee] It's also frustrating that
if you were to look at a graph of the, what is it,
245 million acres of public lands that we have
and you look at how much is allotted for cattle,
and then you look at the very small fraction for horses,
you just got to do the math on that.
[Erik] Wild horses forage a lot more like bison.
Horses can forage ten, 20 miles away from water.
So, they have a lighter impact
on the overall health of the vegetation.
Whereas cattle will forage right next to water sources.
And these are the biodiversity hot spots,
the oases out here in the arid lands.
So, if you have really heavy overgrazing,
close to water,
you're wiping out the biodiversity
not just of the vegetation, but of all the animals,
the insects, the birds, that depend on that.
Wild horses have always been an easy scapegoat
for the livestock industry,
because they don't want to admit
that their cattle and sheep, and the huge numbers of them,
that are overgrazing chronically, year after year,
are the problem with land health in the American West.
This is a-- a simple case of the federal government
doing the bidding of a handful of privileged
livestock permitees that want the horses gone.
They're pointing to basically an innocent victim
in all of this.
Perhaps the biggest issue facing Bureau of Land Management
is the agency's incompetence itself.
[Yvette] We left the Red Desert with two new allies.
And in 2019, we experienced our first roundup.
Which was a massive removal of over 800 horses
in the Triple B area of Nevada.
But before we get into the darker stuff,
I think it's probably time to introduce our team.
[Ed] Uh, Wyoming cell service
isn't the best cell service in the world.
[Richard] That's why we're listening to Alanis Morissette.
[Yvette] The driver is my husband, Ed.
He's my partner in all things.
[Richard] That's a lot of sand.
The sarcastic one is my younger brother, Richard.
There's Kai, our brilliant cinematographer,
and our two first ACs,
who rotated during different trips,
Brianna and Rocio.
There was our set photographer, Marcello,
and our puppy, Whiskey, who grew up along the journey.
[Richard] This ferocious snarling hell hound right here.
[Yvette] As for me,
I was usually editing from the front seat,
or running off to find the horses.
A film crew is like a family,
and we are fortunate to have such a passionate team of people
who endured long hours
and sometimes questionable motel rooms
to tell this story.
We drove through the night to get to Ely,
and braced ourselves for what was to come the next day.
[Richard] We say goodbye to the...
historic Hotel Nevada
and Gambling Hall and Denny's today.
Now we are officially
in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
[Ed] I want to know who even found these horses
and decided they need to be rounded--
-[Richard] Exactly. -[Yvette] Look around.
Like, you can't even see them.
[Richard] But, guys, look how overpopulated it is.
[Yvette] The Triple B HMA is over 1.2 million acres.
An HMA means Herd Management Area,
basically the amount of land
wild horses are allowed to be free.
The BLM justified this roundup,
where they planned to take up to 800 horses
away from their homes,
by citing unnecessary degradation to the land
and wanting to restore a thriving,
natural ecological balance for multi-use.
There were an estimated 3,000 horses
across all of this land.
But the BLM wanted to reduce them down
to as low as 474.
To give you an idea,
that's one horse per roughly 2,500 acres
or 1,900 football fields.
This is what's called an Appropriate Management Level,
or AML.
Essentially, the amount of wild horses
the Bureau of Land Management states the land can sustain.
But in 2013,
the National Academy of Sciences,
a group of independent bipartisan scientists,
stated that the AMLs
were not supported by scientific information,
but the BLM is still using them
to round up thousands of wild horses every year.
Also stating that they're starving and overpopulated,
a repetitive narrative
that we kept hearing in the media,
which was also supported
by some of the ranchers in the area.
[Richard] It's going to get bumpy.
[Yvette] Now, if you dig a little deeper,
wild horses shared that land with livestock,
with up to 7,300 privately owned cattle
and 36,000 sheep,
which are authorized to graze
in the wild horse complex every year.
Now, you might assume
it's just mom and pop ranchers,
who get to graze their livestock cheaply on public lands,
but they're not.
A large number of them are millionaires, billionaires,
and billionaire corporations on Forbes Rich List.
[music fades]
[upbeat music playing over radio]
[Richard] Okay.
[Richard huffs]
Way over there.
[Yvette] We've got ten minutes to be set up.
We just brought about 400 pounds of gear.
[panting] Oh, God.
Quarter mile.
-[sighs] They are far away. -[Yvette] Oh, my God.
[whispering] Do you think they see us?
-[Richard] Yeah. We're on. -Okay.
[Yvette] We were placed on top of a mountain,
miles away from where the helicopters began.
If we didn't have a massive zoom lens,
we wouldn't have been able to see anything.
We also weren't allowed to put up umbrellas,
even though the heat was over 100 degrees,
because they said it would scare the horses.
[helicopter whirring]
The horses were run for miles.
As they got closer,
we saw their coats glistening with sweat,
and babies at the point of exhaustion.
The helicopters then drove them into the trap site,
which was purposefully blocked from view.
This is often where the injuries happen.
Where horses break their legs or their necks,
trying to escape, or get back to their families.
We wondered where that many horses would go,
and why the BLM had a publicist.
[Jenny] Um, so, that historical part,
you know, obviously, they-- they weren't just here.
[Yvette] Mm-hmm.
Something kind of came along after the Ice Age.
Yeah, right.
-To replenish-- -[crosstalk]
You know, being able to survive
in a natural ecological balance.
Green as this looks, you know, they're not gonna eat the sage,
they're not gonna eat--
'cause there's not sufficient foraged water for them.
[Yvette] It was the same narrative again.
And with all due respect to Jenny,
I'm a horse person,
and the horses that we saw getting rounded up
were fat and healthy.
This was just the beginning of the string of lies
that would be purported
by Bureau of Land Management publicists.
But then, all of a sudden,
they asked us to swing our camera around
and point it in the opposite direction.
They said horses were coming in.
It wasn't true.
Where we were looking,
we noticed that a foal had collapsed
and a lone Wrangler was riding out toward it.
What happened next is heartbreaking to see.
But it's important to show
the blatant disregard for life,
and the cruelty with which these horses are treated.
That baby was maybe a month old.
Five foals died due to the roundup.
One was reported by the BLM
to have sustained injuries during transport.
Possibly meaning the baby was trampled to death
in the trailer.
Another died due to water toxicity in holding,
which can medically indicate fatal dehydration
and muscle fatigue from being run so hard.
The outrage we felt was indescribable.
And how expansive is that,
that the helicopters just appear for that long
and then they're racing these horses...
-[Ed] Yeah. Yeah. -...for miles.
Driving them at a gallop for miles?
I-- I mentioned the family dynamics at the Onaqui herd.
And she basically stopped at me and said...
[Richard] Yeah, "A wild animal's a wild animal."
[Yvette] Yeah, they just mate with each other and--
[Richard] Some people are animal lovers,
but they don't respect how intelligent they actually are.
[Ed] Yeah. They just can't.
[Yvette] That's just-- that's just--
that's ignorance, that's willful ignorance.
[Kai] Look, how could-- could those trucks
filled with horses, come all the way here...
-[Yvette] And then come back. -...then come back that fast?
[Kai] That's some conspiracy-- conspiracy shit. [groans]
Just keep rolling the whole time, okay?
[Kai] Yep. Yep.
[Jenny] They want to feed and water these horses
and let them settle before we have a bunch of bodies again.
Yeah. [muffled speech]
[Kai speaking indistinctly]
We do not have that on [muffled speech] horses.
[Yvette] We had to wait for several hours
before we got to see the horses up close.
[somber music]
When we were finally allowed to go in,
we were only allowed to set the camera down a few times.
A ranger with a gun had been with us all day,
and several other BLM employees were armed.
It seemed a little excessive for a couple of filmmakers
and a handful of wild horse advocates.
In the short time that we had,
we managed to capture some very upsetting images
of the horses of Triple B who had lost their freedom.
Once they got to holding,
the Bureau of Land Management euthanized multiple horses,
including those they deemed blind,
even though they had survived just fine in the wild.
Euthanasia in this situation usually isn't done
with a humane injection.
That's one of the reasons the employees carry guns.
They often shoot the horses to put them down at holding.
And we wondered if this was one of the reasons
we had to wait several hours before we got to see them.
Sixteen horses lost their lives in the roundup of Triple B.
Very few would ever see their families again.
It was heartbreaking to think
that this was going to happen to our beloved Onaqui herd,
and that their families would suffer the same fate.
It also started to make us ask deeper questions.
Who are we to look down on animals
like they're lesser or secondary?
After all,
humans are social animals, just like horses.
And there are plenty
of other indisputable similarities between us.
To say wild horses don't have feelings or families
seemed like a form of human exceptionalism,
self-delusion, arrogance,
especially given we're the only species
willfully destroying our own planet.
So, perhaps, that makes animals superior to us.
In rare places in the United States
that actually maintain
a thriving, natural ecological balance,
such as Yellowstone, or Glacier National Park,
the animals and habitat flourish.
These are places where predators,
like wolves and mountain lions,
aren't killed to make way for livestock.
But balanced places like this are few and fast-disappearing,
just like wild horses.
If we want to have a chance at living in harmony,
doesn't that mean protecting and re-wilding our world
instead of destroying it?
All of these larger questions started with the Onaqui.
The protection of this herd
began to represent something greater.
We decided to ask for support.
From not only the community
fighting hard to protect them,
but from children.
And something miraculous happened.
We began receiving thousands of letters
from people all over the world,
who joined us in standing with wild horses.
Perhaps there is hope for the Onaqui yet.
["Horse with No Name" by America playing]
♪ On the first part of the journey ♪
♪ I was looking at all the life ♪
♪ There were plants and birds and rocks and things ♪
♪ There was sand and hills and rings ♪
♪ The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz ♪
♪ And the sky with no clouds
♪ The heat was hot and the ground was dry ♪
♪ But the air was full of sound ♪
♪ I've been through the desert ♪
♪ On a horse with no name
♪ It felt good to be out of the rain ♪
♪ In the desert, you can't remember your name ♪
♪ 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain ♪
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪ After two days in the desert sun ♪
♪ My skin began to turn red ♪
♪ After three days in the desert fun ♪
♪ I was looking at a river bed ♪
♪ And the story it told of a river that flowed ♪
♪ Made me sad to think it was dead ♪
♪ You see I've been through the desert ♪
♪ On a horse with no name
♪ It felt good to be out of the rain ♪
♪ In the desert, you can't remember your name ♪
♪ 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain ♪
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪
♪ After nine days, I let the horse run free ♪
♪ 'Cause the desert had turned to sea ♪
♪ There were plants and birds and rocks and things ♪
♪ There was sand and hills and rings ♪
♪ The ocean is a desert with its life underground ♪
♪ And a perfect disguise above ♪
♪ Under the cities lies a heart made of ground ♪
♪ But the humans will give no love ♪
♪ You see I've been through the desert ♪
♪ On a horse with no name
♪ It felt good to be out of the rain ♪
♪ In the desert, you can't remember your name ♪
♪ 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain ♪
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la-la
♪ La-la-la, la-la
[music fades]
[gentle folk music]
[Yvette] Our journey took us over 20,000 miles
across 13 different states and diverse landscapes.
The Red Desert turned into lush forest.
And there were a few places that struck us most of all.
They were the horses of Heber,
living in the Sitgreaves National Forest.
And in the woodlands of Oregon,
these horses had rare bloodlines
thought to have died out many years ago,
until the Kiger were found.
We also wanted to speak with ranchers
to get their side of the story.
Surely not every rancher wanted wild horses gone.
I'm Stacey Davies, Manager of Roaring Springs Ranches
in French Glen, Oregon.
We have, on those ranches, three Herd Management Areas,
South Steens, Beatys Butte, and the Kigers.
[Kathy] I am Kathy Gibson Boatman.
I was born here in Arizona.
Um, I'm an eighth-- seventh generation
involved in cattle ranching in Arizona.
I love horses.
I-- I mean, I'm a rancher because I love horses.
And the wild horses are such an icon.
They keep the trails open,
they utilize foraging areas the cows won't go.
And we feel like they're part of the multiple use
that should happen on that range land.
[Kathy] The government gave homesteads,
encouraging people to come and settle
the wild western frontier
because it was a wild, wild western place,
you know, still had Indians doing battle,
and the Historic Preservation Act of 1966 requires
that they consider how their decisions impact
our historic resources and our cultural traditions.
[Stacey] The Kiger HMA would be somewhere around 30,000 acres.
They generally keep it right around 100 head of horses.
How-- how do you count every single horse
on a single given day?
I've heard there's anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500.
It all depends on what area you're counting those horses in.
7,000 that they know of.
[Stacey] When they set these herds up,
it was recognized that any one herd below 300
would not mean enough genetic diversity
to maintain a healthy population.
There was a big argument
that we should not have herds of less than 300.
So, people, especially advocates,
are currently asking for a look at AML.
And that many of these AMLs are too low,
and that too much forage was allocated to livestock
and not enough to horses.
And-- and I'm asking
rather than have that s-- small debate,
that we have a much bigger national debate.
Let's look at the whole program at the top and come down,
and how many horses is enough for the US government to own?
I think it's wrong to-- to say that every one of these HMAs
should have 300 to 500 head,
so you have enough genetic diversity,
because I don't think the BLM needs
200,000 horses on the range.
I think 20,000's probably enough.
And that wasn't really the intention
of the Wild Horse and Burro Act.
The intention of the Horse-- the Wild Horse and Burro Act
was not to just set up some creatures
as though they were unicorns for people to look at,
who just magically appeared.
There was just an overpopulation.
Therein lies the horse herd that we are dealing with now.
Ha-- have they tested them genetically
to show their lineage?
There's talk of that, but they say it's not--
not feasible, not viable, not a viable option.
Congress has allocated every dollar
for the Wild Horse and Burro program
that BLM's ever asked for.
So, you-- if you ask BLM that question,
they'll say, "We don't have enough money."
BLM is not creative.
They are bureaucratic,
they don't think outside the box,
they are not innovative, and I think they should be.
The ranchers are part of the solution.
All of the good ground is private land,
all intermingled with public land.
So, if you take my public grazing permit away from me
and I fence off my private land,
I screw up the HMA completely,
'cause those horses can no longer move
throughout 40 acres with a reservoir in the middle.
We fence off the 40, the horses die.
So, what do we own?
We own all the water.
So, there's an interdependence between public and private land.
I hope that we can have continued discussions
about what wild horse-friendly ranching looks like
and it can include the BLM.
We can have that programmatic review.
And if Congress really wants to work on this issue,
that's what they would do.
[Yvette] To date,
there have been no legal roundups
of the Heber horses.
Though the Forest Service is currently pushing for one.
However, in the '80s and '90s,
the Forest Service colluded with ranchers
to round up dozens of Heber horses
and sell them at auction.
These places can often lead to the slaughter pipeline.
[Stacey] Death is an interesting topic.
So, humans, and especially North American humans,
don't deal with death very well.
To me, there's just this total disconnect
between what's humane and not humane.
Now, is the trader right inhumane,
or are they handled poorly in the corral?
We can have a discussion around that.
But the actual death?
There's no better way than to go with a stun gun.
[snaps finger] Done.
[Yvette] But in Mexico, some of those deaths
in those slaughter plants are just-- I--
So, let's do it in the US, where we can control it.
Horse meat's great meat.
There was great uses for it before.
So, let's do it in the US,
where we can control the manner in which it's done.
We can have humane handling of the animals,
right up until their death.
Far more humane
than what they're going through on the range.
I've had people tell me,
"Well, the ranchers should get their own private land,
or go back to-- go to Texas."
Well, I've been to Texas,
and they're selling off private ranches there.
And they're selling them to be game preserves, you know?
I don't know how you feel about it,
but I don't really want to eat zebra.
♪
[Yvette] By this stage,
we had gotten familiar with the slaughter pipeline.
And we had gotten to know some of the players
that run kill pens.
Basically feedlots or auctions,
where kill buyers purchase horses and burros
to send to slaughter.
In the United States,
slaughtering horses to sell their meat
for human consumption is not legal.
However, it's not illegal
to send them across the border to Canada and Mexico.
We wanted to get down to Texas to take a look for ourselves.
Of course, we couldn't bring regular film cameras
into places like these, so we had to be covert.
-Which button is it? -[Yvette's dad] Top one.
Oh, my God, that is a freaking--
-[Yvette's dad] Yup. -[Richard] That's--
[Yvette's dad] Do you see the screen here, though?
Where?
[Yvette's dad] Right here in my hand?
I can't move it too far.
[Yvette] My husband, Ed, was in the middle
of producing another movie,
so my dad joined my brother and I on this trip
for an added layer of protection.
[Yvette's dad] I was just thinking of buying a horse.
[man] All right.
[Yvette] It was nerve-wracking,
going into a place like this.
My little camera wasn't as covert as we thought,
but Richard's button cam, which we sewed into his shirt,
was nearly undetectable.
So, most of our footage lives here.
[auctioneer auctioneering]
[man 1] Man, busy day.
[auctioneer continues indistinctly]
[Yvette whispering] Rick. They've got a zebra in here.
It's a baby.
[indistinct chatter]
[Richard] Excuse me, sir.
Where are the wild horses?
[man] They're over the hill.
[Richard] Oh, got you.
There are probably 30, 40... [muffled speech]
[Yvette whispers] Oh, my gosh.
What are those?
It's like a zebra and a horse combined.
[Richard] Oh, my God.
You can tell they got the same blue eye.
[Yvette] Yeah.
You see her down there?
On our very first day,
we got a glimpse into the auction world of Texas.
But the loose horses that my dad was asking about,
the wild horses,
had already left early in the morning.
We'd be there the next day to see them.
This was part of the auction not on the schedule.
[Yvette's dad] I want to go one or two more down.
-[Richard] Yeah. -[Yvette] Down here?
[Yvette's dad] Yeah, let's get a little closer, maybe.
-[Yvette] We got good seats. -[Richard] Yeah.
[auctioneer auctioneering]
So, 2,550 down here?
[indistinct chatter]
[auctioneer continues indistinctly]
[indistinct chatter]
[Yvette] It was all we could do to keep from crying out.
Especially when the mothers
and their terrified babies came through.
I was also nervous when I recognized
a known kill buyer in the audience.
Thankfully, he didn't know what I looked like.
We were told that if the horses were bought in big numbers,
they were probably being shipped to slaughter in Mexico.
[Yvette's dad] Where'd they-- Where'd they capture all those?
-In the-- out in the range? -[Richard] Yeah.
[Yvette] We were also curious
where the zebra was from earlier.
[Richard] I think that's him in the red, in the-- yeah.
[Yvette] It was surreal seeing zebras in a place like this.
We couldn't imagine where they might end up next.
Especially given
there are no limits on exotic animal hunting in Texas.
We also noticed on social media,
almost immediately after the donkeys were purchased,
they popped up on a kill pen website...
listed for sale or slaughter.
We ended up speaking to someone in the know at the auction,
who offered to do an interview.
[man over phone] If it's in somebody's budget,
they go across the border,
and once they go across the border,
they more than likely don't come back.
[Yvette] But when our camera showed up,
he disappeared and stopped responding to calls,
text messages, and voicemails.
He did do a brief call with me on the phone.
[Yvette] We were here earlier this morning,
and with the little donkeys
and with some of those wild horses,
we did notice certain numbers were bidding on a lot of them.
Are they bidding on them to send them down to Mexico?
[man over phone] Oh, more than likely.
If you-- if you-- if you're there
and you're paying attention in the ring
and the number of buyers,
if there's a guy there that buys over,
you know, ten head, he's buying for the killers,
is what they-- they call them the killers--
or sometimes they're not killers,
but he's buying for Mexico.
Like, 90% of those donkeys,
they probably all got bought,
and they'll probably go to Mexico
and then on the horse side,
yes, if you pay attention to it and you listen
and you see one number and he's buying,
you know, over ten horses
and he's not paying over $1,000 a piece for them,
then, yes, ma'am, he's-- he's putting together a load
and he's gonna send them to Mexico.
They'll send anything down there.
It's-- Whatever doesn't get bought,
a killer buyer will buy, no matter how junky it is.
If it comes in there with a broke leg,
it doesn't matter.
They'll give a price for it and it'll sell.
[door slams shut]
[Yvette] There were low parts in our journey,
but this was definitely one of them.
Thousands of wild horses and burros
had ended up in the slaughter pipeline.
And as theNew York Times exposed,
the Bureau of Land Management's own adoption incentive program
had led to duplicitous people making thousands of dollars
by adopting wild horses and burros
and then flipping them at auctions,
like the one we were just at.
The BLM's budget
for the Wild Horse and Burro program
in 2021 alone,
was over 115 million dollars.
Where was all of that being spent?
When we looked, we saw that more than half of it
was being spent on long-term and short-term holding.
Basically incarcerating wild horses
for the rest of their lives at taxpayers' expense.
We'd visited these facilities and it was awful.
The wild horses were branded like cattle.
Tags were strapped tightly around their necks.
Some were even spray painted.
And worst of all,
they were separated from their families.
You could just see the betrayal in their eyes.
Especially when they looked out beyond the bars,
toward the mountains.
Many of these places don't have shade...
or any shelter from the elements.
All they can do is wait and comfort each other.
♪
Unsurprisingly, as it turned out...
millions of dollars were being spent
on contracts for helicopter roundups...
and for livestock ranchers
to use their pastures to warehouse wild horses.
Several of these contractors
such as Cattoor Livestock Roundup Inc.,
better known as the Cattoor family,
were among the BLM's contractors of choice...
along with Shane F. Sampson and Sun J Livestock.
Sampson had earned over four million dollars.
Sun J Livestock had been awarded approximately ten million.
And the Cattoors had earned over 30 million dollars
in contracts from the United States Government.
Let's reiterate that these are contractors,
awarded millions by the American Government,
funded by our tax dollars, to round up wild horses
which are supposed to be federally protected.
But shockingly, in 1992, along with several others,
Dave Cattoor was convicted and pled guilty
to breaking a federal law.
For conspiring to use his aircraft to hunt wild horses
for the purposes of capturing them,
killing them and sending them to slaughter.
He was only fined $500.
And the BLM continues to hire
Cattoor Livestock Roundup Inc.
[Scott] My name is Scott Beckstead.
I'm Director of Campaigns for Animal Wellness Action
and the Center for a Humane Economy.
And I'm also an adjunct professor of law
at Willamette University.
There has been a push,
an aggressive push by the Bureau of Land Management
to ramp up these roundups and removals,
and it's being fueled by the huge sums of money
appropriated to it by Congress.
Congress has been successfully lobbied
by the beef industry for the roundup and removal
of huge numbers of wild horses and burros
to get the population down to the low AMLs.
The BLM has constructed this false narrative
about an overpopulation of wild horses.
It's a clever ploy because it diverts
the public's attention away from the effects
of overgrazing by millions of commercial livestock
that the BLM has allowed to happen on our public lands.
What makes these roundups so difficult to stop
is the huge amounts of money.
Congress has really enabled this
by appropriating 116 million
in 2021 alone to fund these operations.
It pays the helicopter contractors
millions of dollars to do their work,
and then it also appropriates millions more
to these private entities, mostly corporations,
to build these off-range holding facilities
where tens of thousands of our wild horses
and burros will be kept.
Hi, I'm Marty Irby, I'm the Executive Director
of Animal Wellness Action in Washington DC.
I'm one of the nation's top lobbyists in the country
and also the top lobbyist on horse protection issues.
One thing that most people don't realize that occurs
is that there are lobbying dollars
in Washington DC that we're up against.
It's a David and Goliath situation
because there are actual federal funds
called "USDA Commodity Checkoff Programs."
Those commercials, you see, like, "Got milk,"
"Beef, it's what's for dinner,"
"Pork, the other white meat," and "The incredible edible egg,"
aren't really commercials or ad campaigns,
they're USDA checkoff programs,
they're funded by dollars paid in by producers
to sell these products.
These entities are quasi-governmental entities,
and they're utilizing the funds
to illegally lobby for policies
that we don't support,
policies that put small farmers out of business,
policies that harm animals,
policies that are pro-slaughter,
total of $850 million a year
for all of the checkoffs combined.
Basically, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association,
NCBA, which is the beef checkoff,
uses their money illegally to lobby for horse slaughter.
These horses are going to become food
for someone in China, Japan or Europe.
I think one of the most glaring examples
of this corrupt system is with J. R. Simplot,
uh, which is an Idaho-based food company
that grazes tens of thousands of cattle
at a taxpayer-subsidized rate
of a dollar 35 per animal unit month
on grazing allotments across five western states.
So, it's enriching itself by grazing its livestock
at taxpayer expense on the front end,
and on the back end it's being paid millions
by the BLM to hold onto large numbers of wild horses
that have been removed from our public lands
to clear the way for more commercial livestock grazing.
And it should terrify every single American
who cares about wild horses and burros
that a food company is being paid
to hold onto large numbers of these wild horses and burros
that have been removed from our public lands.
[Yvette] When you think about it,
you can barely buy a single can of cat or dog food
for a dollar 35.
But big food corporations
were getting these massive tax subsidies
to graze their cattle on our public land
for a little over a dollar a month,
when private ranchers had to pay over 20
using their own land.
That didn't seem fair.
And wild horses were being rounded up because of it.
In 2021, we were about to experience
this corruption for ourselves.
[calm music]
The iconic horses of Sand Wash Basin in Colorado
are known for the legendary paint stallion, Picasso.
This place, just like Onaqui, had its own magic.
It was interesting to watch the wild horse hierarchy...
as each family waited their turn for water.
Often, the stallions would scope it out first for safety.
And in some bands, a lieutenant stallion
can be an extra set of eyes over the family...
until the band stallion returns.
♪
At Sand Wash Basin, there were watering holes
that were filled naturally by the elements.
And there were also manmade troughs,
which local advocates helped to maintain.
Right at sunset...
hundreds of horses appeared before our eyes.
And then, almost as quickly as they came...
they were gone.
It takes a lot of effort and understanding
and decades of data to understand
what the range condition is like.
Just don't go out there
looking for the beautiful horses,
which they are very beautiful,
and understand what's in the [indistinct].
Okay, but could you just tell us the reasoning
behind the roundup at Sand Wash?
So, the way we manage horses
to be in harmony with their habitat,
so the habitat and the horses are healthy,
is by managing the numbers.
Um, you know, unlike other large grazers,
they're just kind of more or less there all year.
Um, and so that means that the numbers of animals,
the numbers of mouths need to be appropriate
for what the landscape is capable of producing.
So that's--
Let me jump in there and say, "But why do we do it?"
We do it because we're required by law...
[Hunter] Mm-hmm.
...to manage for a thriving ecological balance.
How do you guys feel about the fact
that the Governor has called for a moratorium on this roundup
to be evaluated through more of a fact
and science-based lens?
Uh, we appreciate their interest,
and we're going to continue to work with Colorado
to find creative solutions to manage these horses
in a healthy way
and also resulting in a healthy landscape.
That's-- that's what we are going to do moving forward.
[Yvette] How do you feel about the Governor's position?
[Bruce] Again, we appreciate their position,
we appreciate them wanting to work with us,
and we want to work with them.
And so we need to by mandate, by law,
manage healthy horses on healthy range lots.
[Yvette] Did they consult?
Because I know the National Academy of Sciences
in 2013, I believe, stated that the AMLs
were not based on fact or science.
So, they're saying-- they're saying there was a--
a considerable, uh, production data collected
all across Sand Wash in the '90s,
and that went into setting,
uh, you know, for Sand Wash.
But from the '90s, into the year--
into 2011, 2013, 2015,
obviously, there's a lot going on with climate change
and why would data that's that old--
The-- these rangelands change, but they change very slowly.
You don't wait till the range land has collapsed,
and then you find poor body condition,
you don't wait for that.
So-- so, you're rounding them up pro--
before they can reach a point of poor body condition?
The BLM's role legally,
statutorily, is to manage the habitat.
That, you know, the-- the state,
uh, you know, they manage the animals.
Um, except for the horses, you know,
uh, like, say the horse is the only thing BLM manages
that has a heartbeat.
Every-- every other critter out here is either the state
or if it's listed, it's Fish and Wildlife Service.
[Yvette] The BLM had announced an emergency roundup
to permanently remove nearly 90% of the wild horses
of Sand Wash Basin.
This emergency status
allowed them to move forward with the roundup quickly
and didn't require the BLM to assemble public comments.
They originally said the roundup
was due to poor body conditions of the horses and drought,
even though the water holes were full.
But then the BLM's narrative suddenly changed.
The BLM then said they were removing the horses
because of negative impacts to sage-grouse habitat
and for future starvation.
They also ignored the requests
of Colorado Governor Jared Polis,
Western Watersheds project, and the Sierra Club
to halt the unnecessary roundup of Sand Wash Basin.
-[Troy] Yeah. -[man] Yeah.
We are direct right in the--
-in line of the wings. -[Chris] Sure.
-So, we need to go-- -[horse blusters]
Just over the other side of this, right?
-Yeah, I don't know. -Okay.
I'm just gonna go down here and see if I can find a hole
-to get to. -All right, absolutely.
So, yeah, we'll just move the vehicles down
a little farther.
Uh, you could leave your equipment here
if you'd like, just right off this area.
[Yvette] It's actually safer to be near a tree,
if the wild horses come near us.
[Chris] Usually, [indistinct].
-[Yvette] It's safer. -I'm not arguing with you.
We'll comply, but I'm just letting you know
that God forbid a wild herd ga--
gallops over this mountain,
you're gonna want to scream to everybody
to stand under this tree.
And I just-- I don't care
whose side of the issue you're on.
This-- this is safer.
What Cattoor wants is for us to not get a clear line of sight
as to what's about to happen.
So, here we are at Sand Wash Basin.
We were asked to move from that tree to here.
So, that the horses apparently can see us.
And apparently we're hiding behind this mountain.
However, we cannot see
the helicopter operation at this point.
[Yvette] From our vantage point behind the hill,
we could barely see anything the helicopter was doing...
until the horses were driven into the trap site.
It was the first time we had been this close to one.
And it was horrifying to see.
Numerous horses had sustained injuries.
[Chris] Actually, [indistinct] they're putting up--
Hovering on the area where the foals were running,
which indicates that, in fact,
the foals were not in a good position earlier.
The paneling does-- the plastic fence,
it will prevent the foals from--
and the horses from wanting to run through the panel.
So, because they didn't have that up earlier,
those three yearlings were running around
and starting to test the pen.
So, the fact that they're putting up now indicates
that they weren't doing it correctly earlier.
[Yvette] Interesting, and that's when,
apparently, that one-- that one yearling got hurt,
and his shoulder was bloody or her shoulder was bloody.
[Brian] Uh, it seems to be, yeah.
[Yvette] The Bureau of Land Management
made us wait for almost two hours
before we were allowed to approach the corrals.
Their reasoning was,
"People near the corrals would upset the horses."
Apparently those rules
didn't apply to roundup personnel.
It was cold, and it was raining,
and it was almost like they were trying to wait us out.
[man] Ah, there's horse locations--
[Yvette] When we were finally allowed closer
to the trap site...
that's when we saw the injuries.
-[woman] [indistinct]? -[man] Yep.
[woman] So, when do you think... [muffled speech]
[Yvette] But as hard as all this was to see
people kept on coming to support the horses
and to hold the Bureau of Land Management accountable.
We found it exceedingly bizarre...
that Dave and Sue Cattoor showed up to watch
as the horses of Sand Wash Basin lost their freedom.
I'm Steve Leonard,
I'm the Wild Horse and Burro Lead for the state of Colorado.
Roughly we're at 896 horses
between inside the HMA and outside the HMA.
And we're trying to reduce that population down
to the low AML of 163.
So, this is an emergency gather.
Um, we're conducting this
because of the lack of forage and water for these horses.
Um, and so our objective here is to reduce the herd to,
um, the appropriate national levels.
[Yvette] The reasoning seems to have changed
from an emergency roundup due to drought,
and because they were in poor body condition
to identifying that
they're not going to have enough winter forage,
and there's something to do with sage-grouse now,
that was-- didn't seem like it was part of the conversation
until recently.
Well, um, so we always take into consideration
the needs of all the users on public lands when we're--
when we're managing wild horses and burros,
so that includes wildlife.
Um, so the sage-grouse were always gonna be
part of this decision to manage this herd.
[Yvette] Didn't the range land specialist just state
that the Bureau of Land Management
only manages wild horses?
That every other critter falls outside of their purview?
Why were they suddenly trying to scapegoat wild horses
for negative effects to sage-grouse?
I'm Megan Crawford, I'm part of the SWAT team
here in the Sand Wash,
and I worked for the BLM the season of 2016
doing, uh, sage-grouse surveys
and with the emergency gather, it's honestly kind of a cop-out.
They don't have to do an environmental assessment,
they don't have to, uh,
have a public scoping comment period,
they-- they basically can say we are doing this,
these are the numbers we're gonna take,
this is the amount of horses we're gonna leave,
and it kind of takes
all of the accountability out of the system
because it's sort of just a standing order,
and we're all just supposed to bend to it.
And how they can say it's solely the wild horses
that are the reason
that the sage-grouse are not rebounding
seems a little bit absurd to me.
I'm not sure the exact number of sheep that are out here,
but having that many sheep compared
to the amount of horses, I-- I think it's a cop-out to say
that it's the wild horses that are degrading the land.
[Yvette] Did any of your beliefs change
in how things were conducted?
Honestly, I was a little surprised
about the brashness of the BLM side.
I don't think that they really care
for the horses out here.
You know, even what they would say,
the advocates were,
which they kind of used as a bad word around there.
[Yvette] One of the advocates on the ground pointed out
that there were babies only a day old
being chased by the low flying helicopters.
Though the BLM continues to define
helicopter roundups as humane.
Something else we found suspicious that day
was the Cattoor helicopter.
Our camera operator, Jerry, was also a pilot
and he pointed out that while there was a United Flight,
30,000 feet above us,
we could not track the Cattoor helicopter.
The potential accusation
was that they had blocked their ADS-B,
which the FAA said a contractor can do upon request
but can be dangerous given other aircrafts in the area.
That, or the signal simply wasn't being picked up on
because of the terrain.
What we found suspicious
was that the BLM repeatedly refused
to answer any of our questions
about why the helicopter had vanished.
So, there was ultimately no way for us to track
how many grueling miles they were running these horses.
Uh, the total contract cost for this
is just under 300,000.
That doesn't include holding, no.
[Yvette] With the target of 733 horses to capture
the approximate cost to taxpayers
to warehouse all of those horses for the rest of their lives
was over $36 million.
Thankfully, due to an intervention
by Governor Jared Polis and Congressman Joe Neguse,
the roundup ended early
and the total captured was 479.
[Yvette] This is how narrow this stuff is.
[melancholic music]
These horses are in this.
[Yvette] They were sent to a holding facility
at Canyon City Federal Prison where only months later,
when 145 horses mysteriously died.
Only two months after the wild horses
of Sand Wash Basin
were almost completely eradicated,
thousands of sheep were spotted in the basin.
[protestors] [chanting] Stop the choppers.
Stop the choppers.
Stop the choppers, stop the cho--
Yesterday, the Bureau of Land Management
issued a media statement
that said this roundup is gonna happen.
It was a--
an absolute disregard of the thousands of people
across the country and across the world
who have called the BLM and said,
"Please, please stop this roundup."
My name is Erik Molvar,
and I'm the Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project.
My name is Deniz Bolbol,
I'm with the Cloud Foundation, I'm the Advocacy Director.
Hello, everyone, I'm Marty Irby here,
Executive Director of Animal Wellness Action
and chief lobbyist in Washington DC.
I really appreciate everyone turning out today
to support the Onaqui horses,
my name is Ashley Avis, I'm a filmmaker.
-[protestors cheering] -Now I've been out to Onaqui.
And the BLM says that 474 wild horses
are too many for the range.
Livestock industry coined a term for that.
-Bullshit. -[protestors cheering]
Now, the Bureau of Land Management
has authorized almost 20,000 animal unit months
of cattle and sheep grazing on Onaqui.
On a wild horse Herd Management Area
where they have a congressional responsibility
-to conserve the wild horses. -[protestor] Exactly. Exactly.
This kind of injustice
is happening all around the country.
It's not about a thriving, natural ecological balance.
The BLM is creating a problem
with cattle and sheep degrading the range.
And then, instead of addressing the cause of the problem,
they're blaming the convenient scapegoat,
the wild horse.
So they can keep on overgrazing
with as many cattle and sheep as they always have
without the American public noticing.
Well, guess what, the public is starting to notice.
-[protestor] Yes! -[protestors cheering]
Earlier this year, we sent a letter,
I think it was 70 or so groups, to Secretary Deb Haaland
asking her to put a moratorium on the grazing permits
for these cattle and sheep that they're bringing in.
We didn't get a response.
We're asking you, Mr. President,
please stop the roundups.
Everyone here has an opportunity
to let the president know how you feel.
Call 202-456-1111,
202-456-1111.
And let's light up the White House switchboard.
-[protestors cheering] -Let's light it up.
It's time to call the President. This has to stop.
This is a government agency that is broken.
It's not just sickened, in need of reform,
it is broken, in need of a complete overhaul.
We do need leadership from above.
We need adult supervision
for the agency bureaucrats
who have been making the same mistakes,
-year after year after year. -[protestors cheering]
I think it's so important
that not only the people standing here
but the children in our country
stand up and raise their voices
because they too can make a change.
I'd like to read two letters from two ten-year-olds,
part of a Girl Scout troop.
Dear President Biden.
Dear Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
And dear honorable members of Congress.
"I'm writing to ask you to make laws
to help protect the wild Mustang herds."
"If you were a horse and you were rounded up
in a tiny pen and slaughtered, how would that make you feel?
Scared.
That is how these horses feel, and that is sad and wrong."
"Roundups of herds like the Onaqui must be stopped.
The facts have shown
that these horses just end up in kill pens
bound for a life of pain and suffering."
"These majestic creatures
are caught in the system of ranching monopolies,
encouraged by government enablement
and distortion of the truth."
"President Biden,
please stop the wild Onaqui roundups.
There are babies and elderly horses
out on the range who will not survive the helicopters.
You are the voice that can stop this."
"Please help the Onaqui stay where they belong."
"These horses represent the story of America."
"What will you do for the generations to come?"
"Have the courage to see beyond profit,
and take a serious look at America's long term values."
I'm Jocelyn, I'm ten years old, and I stand with wild horses.
I stand with wild horses.
Hopeful and determined, Jocelyn.
[emotional music]
[Yvette] After the rally to save the Onaqui...
going out to the range was cleansing.
All of our favorite families were there.
The chestnut foal Sun Catcher.
The powerful Stargazer.
The bay roan.
Norman and the three amigos.
♪
[horse neighs]
It was as if they were putting on a show for us.
[horse neighs]
Never had we been so close.
[horse neighs]
Stargazer was in full form,
battling several of the stallions
right before our eyes.
[horses neigh]
A young stallion sailed before us...
as he courted the affections of his very first mare.
It was a harmony only nature could know.
And we were given this quiet glimpse into all of it.
And then...
the one horse we'd hoped to see for years...
the legendary Old Man...
seemed to materialize out of the mountains.
♪
He walked beside us...
and stayed with us until sunset...
when he was called home.
♪
And that night, we were given the spectacular gift...
of hundreds of Onaqui horses galloping to water...
like ghosts of the desert.
Well, uh, thank you everybody for being here,
my name is Gus Warr, I'm the BLM Wild Horse and Burro
Program Manager for Utah,
and I'll be the incident commander on this gather.
Um, been a lot of publicity,
a lot of things associated with-- with this gather.
Uh, we did have a litigation case we were working through,
and we wanted to allow Judge Moss
to make his ruling without overstepping our bounds
and not doing something we shouldn't,
and we did get a ruling
which gave us the green light to be out here today.
This is Lisa Reid,
she's our lead public affairs person out here
on this gather and, uh,
you're gonna hear her, uh, what I call barking orders.
She's in charge of all of you.
I'm in charge of everything out here,
meaning we got an operations person over here,
we've got a law enforcement branch,
we've got a public affairs
and so I'm trying to keep it all in check,
but she's-- she's kind of trying to corral the people.
[officer] You'll see us around,
we're gonna be scattered throughout the operation,
and, uh, we're here for safety, and we're gonna hope to prevent
any interference with the operation.
Because if we start interfering with gather operations,
then unfortunately, we have to move further back,
further away or-- or, you know, if worse comes to worse,
we may have to ask somebody that's not cooperating
for law enforcement to escort them out of the site.
It's a hike but it's-- it's the best--
It's the best viewing you're gonna get.
[emotional music]
[Yvette panting]
[Yvette] We were no longer shocked
that the Onaqui roundup was justified
much like the rest.
When an organization called "Friends of Animals"
filed a lawsuit to stop it,
the BLM field manager for Utah testified under oath
that the horses were in poor body condition
due to being overpopulated
and needed to be rounded up for their own good
to prevent future starvation.
This ended up being false, even by the BLM's own admission.
And three days into the roundup,
the agency announced that most of the horses
were in good shape after all.
But instead of pulling back
or releasing the healthy horses...
they simply changed the justification
for the roundup to drought.
We, along with tens of thousands of people
and advocacy groups across the world...
tried everything we could to stop the roundup of Onaqui.
♪
The night before it happened, as they walked away...
it was like a funeral march.
It was as if they knew.
On the first day, the helicopter kept a distance,
and only 14 horses were captured.
None of the families that we knew
lived in this remote area.
So, we were shocked to see Old Man there
as if he were bearing witness.
The Associated Press showed up
along with advocates and other media.
But we were surprised at how few people turned out.
I think the BLM was too,
because in the days that followed,
the roundup became significantly more aggressive.
[Yvette] Sweetheart, run.
So, the question was, "Why can't we see the traps?"
They're over here, we looked at the viewing area,
and all you could see is the corrals.
You couldn't see the gather area out here.
[Yvette] Can we go up on that ridge,
like we did yesterday?
We were able to climb the mountain to look down--
No, we-- we've selected a viewing site,
we've alerted the contractor,
we've alerted the helicopter pilot,
it's going to be right out here.
That's where we're going to be viewing from.
Unfortunately, we cannot see the trap site today,
and there's plenty of space
to allow us a clear line of sight,
but there are a lot more horses that are being rounded up,
so that can lead to a lot more injury in that area.
It's just-- it's really disappointing
that our observation rights are being denied.
But I'm not surprised.
[Yvette] What was heartbreaking about that morning
was when we arrived,
dozens of Onaqui horses were grazing
right near the trap site.
Stargazer sounded the alarm
before it even happened
and tried to move his family over the mountain
before taking the lead to try to guide them to safety.
But he was too late.
The horses were driven back and forth
as the helicopter looped.
It was horrifying to see.
♪
[Yvette] Oh, my gosh.
It's going in really fast.
[Yvette] The helicopter flew so low to the horses
we were terrified there would be a collision.
[Yvette] Oh, my God.
Guys, you've got to be kidding me.
[Yvette] This was the worst roundup we had ever been to.
And it was personal...
as we watched our families stampeded.
The young foal we called Sun Catcher...
The bay roans, perlino mares
and even Stargazer and his family...
were among those caught in the melee.
We felt like we were being held captive,
stuck on top of the mountain...
unable to help them...
as the Onaqui disappeared into a cloud of dust.
We felt like we had failed them.
The bay roan managed to escape.
But he didn't run away.
He went back for his family
and circled the trap site crying for them.
No, he's going in, he's going in.
[Yvette] As journalists,
it is our constitutional right to observe.
But the BLM did not allow us to see what they were doing
behind the mountain.
Unlike Sand Wash Basin, we had no vantage point
to document any of the injuries
or potential deaths of these horses.
Were any horses injured yesterday?
[woman] None.
[Yvette] And who is the organization
-down there right now? -Wild Horses of America.
And so why would you give preferential treatment
-to an organization? -[woman] There is no
preferential treatment, only the fact
that they are part of our dart team program.
That's clearly preferential treatment,
when we want to document what is going on down there,
and you're denying us our right to observe.
There is nothing-- there is nothing obstructive
about us putting our camera on a ridge just like yesterday
when there were far fewer horses.
We're not-- we're not obstructing anything.
And we had looked at other locations,
in fact, we were over a mile and a half
to where we can get straight on,
but we felt like this was closer and you could see more
and get better identification of the horses.
[Yvette] Can we go see the holding facility
or the, uh, the corrals now?
We'd like to go up on that ridge,
it's a similar distance that we hiked yesterday.
So, we already talked about you could go over here and look,
you can't see the holding facility,
and no, you can't go down there because--
[Yvette] We don't need to go down there,
we've got 1000 millimeter lens, we could go over to that ridge,
which is actually kind of shorter
than we hiked yesterday and we're allowed to do.
We'd like to get a clear shot.
I think you should go over here and look and--
because you don't believe us, go over here--
I don't know where the individual
that went over there.
[Yvette] I mean, you've scouted this area,
you mentioned that this morning.
Can we get a clear shot of the trap-- from--
-of the trap site from there? -You can't,
you can't, that's why I'm saying--
[Yvette] So, why would you send us over there?
Because that's where you asked to go.
[Yvette] I asked to go on this ridge
to go see the trap site.
Yeah, you're not going to be able to see that down there,
and, you know, we have to keep people controlled.
[Yvette] We can see it down there.
What if I get you part way down there
and all of a sudden the helicopter takes off and--
[Yvette] I assume that you're in communication
-with the helicopter. -We are.
[Yvette] You're denying our right to observe,
you're denying our constitutional rights.
[Brian] What did you mean by you need to control the people?
We need to-- we need to make sure people are safe.
-That's what I mean-- -[Yvette] There's no safety
unless you've got some rogue helicopter pilot
who's going to take off,
and then you really hired the wrong person,
it is perfectly safe for us.
We got the best helicopter pilot in the business.
[Yvette] Wonderful. Great. I thought he did--
I thought he kept a very reasonable distance yesterday.
-What about today? -[Yvette] I thought,
well, he got pretty darn close today.
I would like to go over there, so if you've got
the best helicopter pilot in the distance,
he's not going to take off on me.
...people are getting a little bit, uh, emotional,
and, you know, we're going to keep people here--
A minute ago, it was for our safety,
now you're saying it's because we're emotional.
[Gus] Well, emotion runs into that.
If people are getting emotional, how do you control people?
[Brian] We weren't emotional a minute ago.
[Yvette] No, we very calmly asked,
and we said it is our right as journalists,
as public observers to go over there
and point our camera at the trap site.
...of everybody
and the coordination of this group,
we want to keep you here.
So, that's what we're gonna do.
[journalist] Can I go? I'm not emotional.
We're gonna keep you here.
Yeah, no.
So, um, we made such a stink
and made some-- made some pretty damn good points,
and they are now allowing us, after a fight,
to go over to a certain point
where we're allowed to observe.
-Are you filming this? -[helicopter whirling]
So, holy cow.
Wow.
This is nuts.
[piano music]
There is a child that just got out of the helicopter.
Why is a-- why is a kid riding around?
How is that not a liability issue?
[Kai] Well, that's because it's daddy's helicopter.
[Yvette] Yeah, but for a government roundup
of wild horses, you've got a chi--
-you've got a child? -[Kai] Yeah.
That's not even a teenager. That's a little girl.
[Kai] No reason that we couldn't--
Yeah, there's no-- this is absurd, yeah.
We can go low, we can have the camera low,
we can have-- we could crouch below those rocks.
-[Yvette] Absolutely. -[Kai] Zero issue.
[Yvette] We could sit right up here.
We could see the helicopter operations from there.
All the way around the mountain,
and then we could see the trap site.
We could actually see the horses running in, like this.
So, they run them in from there.
And then they're forced through here.
Can you imagine if you were a horse
and you run?
Can you tell me about the child
that was in the chopper yesterday?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
[Yvette] There was a little girl that got out of the chopper,
we've got it on film.
Why is a child riding around?
-Is that legal? -Couldn't tell you.
[Yvette] But after the roundup is done
and the chopper is grounded,
why can't we go over to the other side of the mountain
if we're half a mile away on 1000 millimeter lens?
We discussed this yesterday.
Yeah, and I'd like to know why what you said is changing again.
So, you're not gonna let
the Associated Press over there either?
Yeah, come in.
[Yvette] We were told we couldn't go
near the trap site because it was a safety issue.
But a little girl not only rode around in the helicopter,
but sat on the back of a water truck
as the horses were hosed down.
[horses neigh]
♪
[Yvette] This is just so unfair.
-I can hear them crying. -[horses neigh]
This is just really heartbreaking.
We're not allowed to view the holding facility,
even though it's a BLM holding facility.
There's Kai, we've got officers.
I'm not sure what we're about to encounter.
[melancholic music]
[horses neigh]
[horse blusters]
[horses neigh]
-[Yvette] That sound is-- -[Kai] I know, it's terrible.
We've been listening to it for hours now,
for two hours, it's horrible.
[horse neighs]
♪
[horse neighs]
[Yvette] I'm so sorry.
[Yvette] Three months later, we went back to Delta.
Almost all of the families we've gotten to know...
had been captured and separated.
The beautiful perlino sisters
strode through pools of water and mud.
And their brave stallion who escaped
but gallantly went back for them
was captured too.
The father of the chestnut foal.
Even the powerful Stargazer...
who had been so resplendent in the wild...
had been reduced to this.
♪
[birds chirping]
[flute music]
A number of the horses from roundups...
found safe landings at sanctuaries.
The cremello and the black from Onaqui
landed at Great Escape Mustang Sanctuary in Colorado.
The Black has joined the herd.
Though the cremello wanders alone.
Norman remained free on the range.
Though one of the three amigos, Rowan,
was reported to be killed by the BLM
only days before the roundup
for supposedly having a pre-existing injury.
We never did find the chestnut foal.
Although Stargazer's story ended in a different way.
After the BLM auctioned off the surviving Onaqui horses,
he and his favorite mare were adopted together.
Although they will never again be free.
Old Man was left wild...
though we never saw him again.
The fate of nearly 60,000
wild horses and burros
stuck in holding facilities across the United States...
will never fully be known.
This film is in honor of them...
and for all of their mysterious...
unfathomable wild beauty
that they've brought to the world.
♪
Unbridled and unbroken,
these symbols of our nation's merits
embody the tonic of wildness
that Henry David Thoreau so eloquently phrased
in his reflective piece, Walden.
Wild horses and burros have a place on these lands,
epitomizing the tenacity and grit
this nation strives for.
♪