Tribe Sues Feds for Planned Mass Removal of Wild Horse Herd on Ancestral Lands

A California tribe is suing the federal government to stop the removal of more than 600 wild horses from its homelands.

The Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Tribe of the Benton Paiute Reservation filed a federal lawsuit today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, demanding that the court halt a planned mass removal of wild horses from the Montgomery Pass Wild Horse Territory before federal agencies move forward on July 8.

The tribe is also seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the operation while the case proceeds.

The complaint, filed by the tribe, Chairman Shane Saulque and Ronda Kauk, a member of the Mono Lake Kootzaduka’a Tribe and the Benton Paiute Tribe’s cultural monitor, names the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and senior officials at both agencies as defendants. It alleges the federal government approved the removal of 624 wild horses — 90% of the herd — from the tribe’s ancestral homelands without completing the legally required government-to-government consultation, identifying sacred sites and cultural resources within the operation’s footprint, or assessing the impact of helicopter operations on Benton Paiute land.

“The Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Tribe has attempted in good faith to engage with these agencies through every available channel. We have been ignored,” Saulque said in a news release. “Today we are asking a federal court to enforce the law that Congress enacted to protect places like ours, because the agencies charged with upholding that law have chosen not to.”

The removal is set to take place on July 8 at Montgomery Pass, a mountain pass in Inyo National Forest near the Nevada-California border. The USFS announced the removal on June 22, saying the horses are in excess, pose safety risks, and damage habitats. According to the announcement, the agency’s management plan stipulates that the area can sustain only 130 to 238 wild horses at a time.

The complaint also calls the population data underlying the removal stale. The most recent horse census was conducted in 2024, more than two years ago, and does not account for known mortality events, including significant die-offs following what was described as “a winter of biblical proportions” in 2023.

The tribe rebukes the Forest Service’s position that the animals are “in excess.”

“These horses have lived alongside our people on this land since before any of these agencies existed. They are not ‘excess,’” said Rana Saulque, tribal vice chairwoman and tribal historic preservation officer. “They are part of who we are and where we come from. What is being planned for July 8 is not management. It is erasure, and we will not stand by while it happens.”

The lawsuit raises four legal claims under the National Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106 consultation requirements, Executive Orders 13175 and 13007, which govern tribal consultation and protection of sacred sites, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The tribe details a pattern of stonewalling by the government. Agencies reached out to the tribe in 2023 as part of an environmental assessment for the removal. Saulque responded within 24 hours but was not contacted again for more than a year, by which time the assessment had already been completed. The chairman was excluded from a Forest Service objection-resolution meeting, and a field manager told the tribe the agency would hold a “listening session” with the tribe instead of consultation. In May, an attorney for the tribe filed a formal consultation request and a legal compliance agenda with the agency. It went unanswered.

The complaint documents that the agencies’ own 2025 Decision Record acknowledged tribal consultation was “ongoing” and that concerns about sacred sites “will continue to be considered” at the time of approval.

Kauk has visited the area designated for removal nearly every day for 26 years, during which she has monitored the herd and learned to recognize individual horses by sight.

“These horses are living culture. They are one with our ancestors on this land,” Kauk said in a statement. “Their removal is not a neutral management decision. It is an action taken over the objections of the people whose homeland this is.”

The suit also points to past outcomes resulting from the agencies’ exclusion of the tribe from matters concerning the horses.

In January, Kauk and Rana Saulque alerted the Forest Service that a group of horses was stranded in deep snow. The women arrived on the scene before the agency did, but despite their formal designations as tribal cultural monitors with clearance to observe agency handling of wildlife on their ancestral lands, the Forest Service excluded them from the rescue operation and barred them from observing or assessing the horses at a holding facility.

Instead, they were provided email updates. Six horses were found dead on site; one died of starvation after rescue; three others were euthanized. According to the lawsuit, the agency offered the women the bodies of the dead horses.

USFS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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