A mare and her foal died of severe dehydration this month, casualties in a war on wildness that is supported by our taxpayer dollars. Their bodies fell feet from the “Horse Valley Wilderness” sign. They waited in excruciating pain, desperate for water that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) refused to provide. The mare and her foal were unable to roam in search of an alternative water source not only due to fencing that divides the landscape, but also because their weakened legs were entrenched in mud. In their final moments, the mother and baby sought comfort in each other. Instead of providing water to the tortured mare, the BLM eventually provided a bullet to end the pain her life had been reduced to. After waiting for hours in the desiccated pool, the foal was eventually taken to the Axtell holding facility overnight. Unable to be revived to health, they too were euthanized.

The agency’s heartless response epitomizes a much deeper, systemic dysfunction spurred by the conflicting interests of livestock corporations. While restricting the number of wild horses in the Muddy Creek Herd Management Area to 75-125, the agency permits 2,853 private cattle to graze in the same region. In Utah alone, the BLM’s appropriate management level is 1,956 horses, while in contrast, the BLM administers 1.3 million Animal Unit Monthly permits for the same land, the equivalent of up to 2.6 million individual bovines. Not only do cattle adversely impact the land with their sheer abundance and grazing patterns, they also exacerbate natural drought by contributing disproportionately to the climate crisis, reducing the ecological harmony of the land to dust. The PEER drought monitor report released by the Bureau of Land Management in 2021 documents Muddy Creek Herd Management Area as an allotment where “current livestock grazing management or level of use on public lands is, or is expected to be, a significant causal factor in the non-achievement of land health standards.” Despite these conditions, the BLM refuses to supply emergency water for the horses, stating that providing water “cause[s] harm to herds.”

While advocates who try to provide water to dying animals are subject to harassment and even arrest by BLM officials, the agency cannot be prosecuted for their own violations of their guiding legislation. Although intended to permanently protect horses from “capture, branding, harassment, or death,” The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act lacks one vital component: a right for the people to bring legal action to enforce it. Unlike the Endangered Species Act, for example, the act lacks a citizen suit provision, meaning that in order to prosecute malfeasance, lawyers must often prove the BLM’s actions violate another federal statute rather than the act itself. And so the BLM continues to blame wild horses for their own deaths.

What happened under the blazing sun of Muddy Creek is not a mishap. It is not an unfortunate anomaly. It is the loss of life, liberty and wild beauty in the chokehold of an agency who repeatedly chooses the livestock industry over their federal responsibility to ensure the survival of horses born free.

Courtesy photo

If you believe our country must rise above such cruelty, call your members of Congress today and tell them that the BLM’s policy does not align with the willful ignorance that claimed the lives of a mare and her foal. Demand that the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act be amended to include a citizen suit provision so we the people may expose the lack of enforcement. Share their story so we may propel change before the next horses fall victim to systemic inaction. By failing to challenge the current paradigm, we subscribe to the future consequences of this agency’s negligence.

Josselyn Wolf is a 16-year-old artist, activist and Wild Beauty Foundation Youth Ambassador. Her passions gravitate toward storytelling, particularly stories that illuminate injustice and compel people to pursue a more compassionate and sustainable world. To learn more about the tragedy at Muddy Creek, please visit: https://wildbeautyfoundation.org/wild-horse-family-dies-at-muddy-creek-while-blm-does-nothing/