The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will host a free public tour of the Indian Lakes Off-Range Wild Horse and Burro Corral in Fallon, Nevada, on Friday, October 27, 2023. Attendees will have the opportunity to view wild horses gathered from overpopulated herds in Nevada and Oregon.
The privately owned and operated corral is located Fallon, Nev. which is approximately a 90-minute drive east of Reno. There will be two public tours offered to begin at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and each will last about two hours and accommodate up to 20 people on each tour.
REPORT
October 29, 2023: We reached the Indian Lakes Off range holding facility at 9:00 am, where there were 11 members of the public, including News 8. This facility, located in Fallon, NV, is typically closed to the public, but it offers tours twice a year.
It made up of 320 acres of pens and has the capacity to old up to 7,600 wild horses, but currently, there are approximately 3,700, including 200 foals. They have no shelter structures in the pens. A few of the new pens do have some trees for shade.
There are still 1,300 stallions from the Antelope N roundup awaiting gelding. Older horses had hip brands and will be shipped to long term holding.
In addition to these horses, there are also horses from the Pancake complex gather, Calico, Antelope complex, and Desatoya roundups. Only 12 of the wild horses from Desatoya are currently at this facility, as the others are still waiting to receive fertility control and be released.
According to the information provided during the tour, there are four holding facilities in the state of Nevada: Palomino Valley near Reno, NNCC holding facility, Indian Lakes, and the off-range facility in Paradise Valley near Winnemucca.
Initially, we were informed that the Paradise facility was not yet open, but later during the tour, it was stated that currently, 1,000 horses are being held there. I couldn't find official information about the facility's status online.
The Paradise Valley holding facility is designed to hold 4,000 wild horses in 40 pens on 40 acres, which seems to exceed the appropriate management level (AML). Towards the end of the public tour, we were allowed to visit the pens where the sick horses are held.
While passing the corrals, the BLM representative mentioned that he was unsure about the specific illnesses the horses had, but it could be related to surrogate mares nursing orphaned foals. One mare was clearly observed to have a cyst on her underbelly. Currently, the only burro on the property is located in the sick pen.
