July 1st 2024 the removal of 2577 wild horses began... 23 days later it was called complete by the Wild Horse Specialist, Clay Stott.

I personally stood in observation of the roundup and removal for 10 days, there were 20 total active days of roundup and removal operations of the NLC wild horses, and 3 days of no removal for various reasons.

Sixteen wild horses lost their life during removal operations.... 6 of those deaths due to pre-existing conditions that were old injuries or genetic deformities that were deemed uncorrectable, and there were 10 acute deaths - 10 wild horses that lost their life as a direct result of the roundup & removal operations, 10 horses that died because of human interference.

And then finally, after 4+ months in the Wheatland holding corrals a few lucky wild horses were granted a reprieve and returned home to their wild lands.

That is the quick sum of how the lives of 2577 wild horses, and the people who love them, were forever changed.

At each interval of this thing I thought I would feel some sort of more human and return to a more normal semblance of life....

When it was announced as completed I was relieved that no more would be taken away, but something still held me back and I continued to haunt the lands of this complex, holding my breath waiting for the aerial census report.

When the aerial count was published, I was relieved to see the number of wild horses to be reported still in the complex, and that there were a number of wild horses to be returned to the complex - the number of wild horses to be returned was not wonderful, but a part of me had feared none would be returned.

And even as I did the every day things of life, some part of me was still in limbo, still not really breathing, because those few chosen ones were not yet home.

And it was going to be a {really} long wait for those lucky wild ones that would be returned to their home.... the last captured wild horse of the complex was taken away to the Wheatland holding facility on July 23rd, and there the captured horses waited for Mr Stott to arrive and choose which horses might be returned to the complex, and then they would wait some more as the mares chosen to be returned were treated with the fertility control Gonacon, and then more time passed as per the written EA there was to be 60 days between the first and second Gonacon treatment. And so 4+ months passed between the end of the removal and the return of the chosen few.

And in that time Mr Stott revised his count of how many wild horses he believed were still roaming wild in the complex... and then he changed the number of wild horses that would be allowed to return, and we the public only learned of this change via an email that was for the initial planned return date for Rock Creek Mountain and Dishpan Butte wild horses at the end of October.

There was no explanation or even an acknowledgement of the changes.... if I were not weirdly obsessed with all data related to the roundup, removal, and returning wild horses, I would not have noticed or questioned why the email was showing something different than the published census report.

As many of you already know, I did notice the change in number of horses returning, and it did not go very well between myself and Mr Stott, with him dismissing me as an uninformed and uneducated member of the public that is also unworthy of explaining his processes or methods of reasoning.

This was never a battle I could win but the change needed to be challenged by someone - an aerial count had been done at the end of the roundup in which nearly all horses on the range were removed, the census count was published two weeks after it was completed showing the # of wild horses still found on the range and the # of wild horses that would be returned to the range, it is crazy that the # of horses to be returned was lessened based off of the WHS [Wild Horse Specialist] taking a couple of drives on a 2-track that crosses through Rock Creek Mountain HMA post roundup/removal, claiming to find several dozen horses that had not been found in that area during the roundup and removal, and denying any possibility that there were horses in the area from other parts of the complex following the disturbance of activity from the helicopter roundup.

Even assuming a plane is not able to fly low enough to see clearly enough to count horses in this area, I recall that while observing the Rock Creek Mountain HMA removal, after day 2 of operations in that area Mr Stott stated that he believed they had gotten most all of the horses from there, but that the rancher was insisting they look again.... and so the contractor flew the area again the next morning but did not find a significant number of wild horses left in this HMA.

Somehow, a helicopter pilot skilled enough to fly down into washes and draws (I personally observed and videoed this several times during the removal), was not able to find as many horses as the WHS found while driving a vehicle on a 2-track in a limited access area that is in terrain with limited ground level visibility.

Finally, on November 21st a second email was sent out announcing a second attempt at returning wild horses to the complex for the following week, this time there was no information included of how many wild horses would be released to each area.

But at least we had potential dates for a return of horses to the complex, so I arranged to take time off of my job to be there, and I checked the weather obsessively for the next several days... there was not much else I could focus on!

The night before the first release I was literally vibrating with anxiousness!

November 26th was the first release date.... I was in the parking lot almost an hour before the meeting time, I had books to read and my phone to play on, prepared to wait however long was needed, as we had been warned that the arrival time of the horses from Wheatland could be later than the planned meeting time.

Two other private citizens showed up a little later, and a trailer with horses pulled into the parking lot somewhere between 11:30 and noon, the horses watching everything around them, we were told that Mr Stott had kept going with the trailer of horses he was pulling, and soon we were on the road headed towards Dishpan Butte.

Four horses were released into the isolated western island of Dishpan Butte, one of them the lovely palomino mare I've known for several years in this area, along with a second mare and two stallions - one stallion a stunning young pinto that I instantly recognized as being from Muskrat Basin.

The lone bay stallion that had evaded capture during the roundup & removal was seen to be running towards them with his tail and head high soon after they were released back into the wild.

Four more horses were released into the larger and connected to the complex eastern part of Dishpan Butte, these wild ones kind of meandered about for a little bit, grazing a little as they assessed where they were, and then were observed to be moving along the ridges and towards the interior and more remote part of their HMA.

And then we caravanned over to the Rock Creek HMA, a longer drive as it involved taking one of the very few and limited 2-tracks that access this HMA which is not near the highway and requires crossing another HMA to get to. Two horse trailers parked and allowed us observers to get into position to observe, and as soon as the trailer doors swung open eight horses flew out of the trailer and down the hill in front of us.... those horses gave us one long last distant look and then disappeared into the draws, not wanting one single second longer to be in the presence of humans.

And that was the end of the 1st day for releases.... 16 horses had been released - 10 horses less than should have been returned to Rock Creek Mountain.

November 27th was brilliantly beautiful for the second day of horses being returned.... and it was also the day that snows came pretty dang close along the route the horses would be transported from Wheatland to Riverton, with many of WY highways being in the 'no unnecessary travel' category, and fresh snow on the dirt roads in Muskrat Basin.

I was at the assigned meeting location early again, anxious for the horses to be returned, four other private citizens showed up on this day, two from the day before and a couple from Casper. At about 12ish the first semi truck and trailer pulled into the parking lot - there were many more horses returning to their wild land today.... and today my emotions started to win as the tears began falling and all I could think was - they are finally coming home!

Two more semi truck and trailers pulled in shortly, and soon we were following them down the highway to today's destination of Conant Creek and Muskrat Basin HMAs.

34 horses found their way down the ramp and back into freedom in the Conant Creek HMA, some people have been thrilled that two particular stallions returned, and there were a few Muskrat Basin horses I recognized also released into this HMA, as there had been in the western section of Dishpan Butte.

After we watched the wild ones that had returned to Conant Creek joyously gallop away into the hills, we followed the remaining two semi trucks down the snowy dirt road into Muskrat Basin, the last of the lucky chosen wild ones to be allowed to return home.

Two semi trailers full of horses waited on the top of the rim... this was it, would I see any of the ones I had known and loved before the roundup returned? There were others returned that I had known and of course admired, but there were a few that I had looked for each time I visited these places, and so far none of them had come off of the trailers.

58 horses are videoed by me making their way off of the last two trailers and into the Muskrat Basin HMA.... all of them gorgeous, and two of them were the beautiful buckskin pinto mother and daughter that had fought desperately hard to not be taken into the trap, their fight for freedom is one I recorded and shared during the removal, it was one of the harder days for me as I kinda rather love these two ladies just a bit extra, so when they came off of that trailer with only one horse between them, there was definitely a moment of extra joy in my heart for them.

But.... what about those that were not returned, what about the 10 wild horses that were promised for Rock Creek, and then denied?

I am so thankful for those two mares that were released - especially as I did not ask for them or any other particular wild horse to be returned... and it is nice that all the calls and emails saw two favored stallions returned to Conant Creek - but what about the 10 wild horses that should have been returned, and were not?

Did they not deserve the same outcry of passion from the public!?!?!!

Those 10 horses should have mattered at least as much as the two stallions... the health of the North Lander Complex herds needed those horses to be returned, as much as these 10 wild ones deserved to be returned to their wild lands.

I am thankful for the 108 wild horses I observed coming off of the trailers returning to a land that is theirs, a land that claims them as its own, but I do not accept that it was the correct thing to not return the other 10 horses to the Rock Creek Mountain HMA and the overall North Lander Complex.

By the word of the WHS Mr Stott himself at the release, some of the mares he returned are older and will 'never have another foal', and with all mares returned treated with two doses of Gonacon in a sixty day period as per the written EA, it is expected that there will be no new foals from the treated mares between the years 2026 up until 2028, the only new foals born wild will be from the returned mares that may have foals next year, and from the few mares that were not captured during the removal - thank all that is holy for those stubbornly wild mares and the stallions that kept them far from the roundup and removal traps!

The concern stated in email by Mr Stott of being above low AML is just sad... AML is an outdated # that most recognize as no longer scientifically acceptable for a healthy breeding horse herd, and most everyone is aware it needs to be revised - additionally the WHS can make the decision to allow more horses than the low AML in any given HMA, I have a lot more to say about this but am going to stop here in the interest of not writing an entire book, we can revisit it another day!

This is a vast wild land, a complex of four HMAs spanning across 375,000 acres (including the isolated western piece of Dishpan Butte), much of which I still do not know despite years of traveling the dirt roads and rocky 2-tracks, some of this complex accessible only by foot, or sitting on a hill with binoculars observing the places where there are no roads or ATV trails.

Returning those 10 wild horses to Rock Creek Mountain would not have been destructive to the land, it would have helped to ensure good genetic diversity of the herd of the Rock Creek HMA and the over-all diversity and health of the North Lander Complex herds, and it was the right and correct thing to have done.