Challis, ID, July 2009
By Elissa Kline

For the past 5 years, I’ve been photographing herds of wild horses living on public land in Central Idaho, managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

On July 27, 2009, I photographed a round-up of what is known as the Challis herd. For years, I’ve seen photos and footage of “gathers” (BLM's politically correct term for round-ups)... horses running for their lives, being chased by helicopters, and pushed into holding pens. Nothing I’d heard or seen up until now could have prepared me for what I’ve just witnessed.

Watch the video

My friends and I hiked to a ridge near the “operation.”  In sweltering heat, we watched the helicopter chase herds of horses, family bands as small as 4 and as large as 30, from beyond the horizon, up and down mountains at full speed. Horses slick with sweat, some foals less than a month old struggling to keep up, separated from their mothers...

In the most disturbing part of an already distressing day, we watched the helicopter keep after a stallion that ran off from his herd and up over a ridge. The pilot stayed on top of this horse for at least 15 minutes, so close to the ground that the horse was kicking up at the helicopter.

Finally, ready to collapse, the horse gave up, and the wranglers roped him and brought him in. Having personally witnessed and photographed this incident, I saw no reason why anyone would spend American taxpayers' money, so badly needed elsewhere, on the fuel and helicopter time it took to chase this one horse so relentlessly.

Despite warnings by the landowner before the round-up started, the same pilot flew over private property, two days in a row, and removed horses that had made their home on a local preserve for the past 7 years.

It may be too late for this herd. They are already being sorted and shipped to sale destinations – tightly-knit families broken up, yearlings separated from their bands, proud stallions losing their families… intricate social structures, which I have documented year after year, crushed.

Before & After

The stallion

One of many foals

Personally, I am gutted. I have come to know many of these family bands and my heart breaks for the stress I know they are experiencing during this unnecessary and cruel process.

I interviewed an 87-year old rancher who has lived his life here. He said, “There’s no reason to take these horses off this range… there’s plenty of feed for both horses and cattle… they weren’t hurting anyone. This is just a bad deal and I don’t like it one bit.”

I want to know why, with 33,000 wild horses in government holding pens that BLM cannot afford to care for (and proposed euthanizing last year), we are rounding up more horses that are supposed to be protected on public land. I want the public to know that their tax dollars are going to round up horses that were living free on public land. And I want the horses that are not adopted to be turned back out on the range.

They are our wild horses, on our public land. At least they were…  

Thank you for your time,  

Elissa Kline

Later on, at the BLM corrals…

Injured horses

Young foals
Too young to be chased for so long in such heat…

Orphan foal

I watched this foal go from one mare to another over a period of 3 hours and never saw him connect with anyone. He appeared bewildered, worn down by a helicopter chase and days in the holding pen.

The herd’s homerange after the round-up…

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