A plea for change: Nonprofit agency fights to protect Nevada’s wild horses

Many Nevadans may be familiar with the video of Sunshine, a Palomino horse with a coat that shone like gold in the sun, being chased by a helicopter for 30 minutes during a June roundup.

The horse was fleeing on three legs, his fourth having sustained a “catastrophic compound fracture” as he tried to escape.

After this incident and a number of others where the safety of wild horses and foals has been compromised, Wild Horse Education, a Reno-based nonprofit,recently filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management alleging abusive treatment of horses during these roundups.

Laura Leigh, leader of Wild Horse Education, called this “a desperate plea when everything else fails.”

“Right now, we’ve got to fix this, because this is life and death,” Leigh said. “That’s literally one of the most heartbreaking pieces of the story is that that’s not a place (people) actually agree. Words are very different than actions, and BLM saying ‘we care’ and then doing this again and again and again and again, is not ‘we care.’ Words have to match actions.”

The Sun sat with Leigh to discuss wild horse roundups in Nevada, suggestions for more humane ways to gather these horses and her passion for protecting wild horses.

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