Investigative Media Kit

During mass roundups, the BLM routinely issues Temporary Closure Orders barring the general public from thousands of acres of public land. On what explicit legal authority does the BLM rely to strip the American public and independent media of their right to observe a taxpayer-funded wildlife management operation on public ground?

Independent media outlets and legal groups have documented that your agency routinely positions the few allowed public observers more than a mile away from the trap pens, frequently behind hills or ridges that entirely block the view of the horses being driven into cages. If your handling and capture practices strictly follow the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP), why is the physical layout designed to block the public from viewing the moment of capture?

Given that up to 90% of a helicopter chase occurs out of sight of the designated public observation zones, why does the BLM actively refuse to mandate that its independent helicopter contractors equip their aircraft with telemetry cameras to provide a transparent, unedited record of how these horses are handled on the range?

Because horses processed under the Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) lose their federal protections exactly one year after adoption when legal title transfers, what specific tracking, auditing, or compliance mechanisms does the BLM employ to ensure these taxpayer-subsidized animals ($1,000 per horse) are not being immediately flipped to commercial kill buyers?

The independent watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) documented that commercial livestock outnumber protected wild horses by as much as 125:1 on specific rangelands, and that wild horses are blamed for less than 1% of land health failures. On what transparent, peer-reviewed scientific data does the BLM justify prioritizing the removal of wild horses while continuously authorizing vast commercial livestock grazing across 155 million acres?