The welfare of wild horses during roundups conducted by the Bureau of Land Management has been a persistent controversy.
Wild horse roundups cause acute and chronic welfare harms. Helicopter-driven chases cause physical injury, exhaustion, and separation of mares from foals. Animals arriving at pens after long chases may have suffered trauma. Long-term holding in crowded pens with limited space and social disruption causes chronic stress. The scale of the operation — tens of thousands of animals — makes welfare oversight difficult. Expanding fertility control programs, which require periodic darting rather than roundup, could gradually reduce herd sizes without the acute welfare impacts of mass roundups.