- [Dispatcher] Yeah, just make sure nobody moves at all.

- I can hear the thundering.

Definitely getting closer.

(stomping) Oh, there they go.

(horses stomping) (slow edgy music) (eerie music) (horses stomping) God, that is impressive.

- [Narrator] This is a Bureau of Land Management horse gather, where the government uses helicopters to round up feral horses into corrals.

- [Dispatcher] You guys were hit good, awesome.

Tell everybody up there thank you.

- [Narrator] It's their way of getting these animals off the landscape.

- You are welcome.

- [Narrator] Amy Dumas runs the Wild Horse and Burro program for the BLM in California, and horses are her world.

- BLM United States Forest Service are tasked by the law to manage these horses on the public land.

- [Narrator] In 2022, the BLM gathered 20,000 horses, more than any year since 1985.

But that's less than 10% of the total population, and managing them isn't cheap.

In 2022 alone, the BLM spent 138 million dollars managing wild horses in burros.

- Where does the money come from to fund all of this?

- It actually comes from me and you, the taxpayers.

- Now there are horses pinned here, what are the next steps of this process?

- We'll take 'em to temporary holding.

We'll ship 'em to our, one of our prep facilities.

Then they are prepared for adoption.

- [Narrator] But less than half of the horses are actually adopted or sold.

The rest remain in BLM care or are released back onto the landscape.

- We're trying to do our jobs out here with like one hog tied right?

With one hand behind our back and the other hamstrung because we have to work within our regulations and within our budget.

- [Narrator] Watching these beautiful, iconic animals driven into pins by a helicopter, it felt wrong.

At the same time, letting them continue to multiply, to ravage the fragile landscape, to out-compete native species, that doesn't feel great either.