Tell Congress: Don't Open the Door to Killing Wild Horses, Burros

The president’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal does not include annual language barring the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from using our tax dollars to kill healthy wild horses and burros or sell them to slaughter.

We must ensure this critically important, long-standing and bipartisan protective language is included in the final bill funding the Department of Interior and the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program.

Background:

The absence of this standard protective language would open the door for the BLM to euthanize (shoot or send to slaughter, in all likelihood) thousands of healthy animals or sell them without any protection against being shipped out of the country for slaughter.

In addition to the omission of this important protective language for wild horses and burros, the president’s budget proposal would authorize $106.7 million for the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program — dramatically slashing its budget by more than 25 percent. At best, that would cover the cost of caring for the 62,853 captive wild horses and burros living in off-range holding facilities. The BLM spent $101 million on holding last year.

The threat of allowing the BLM to kill healthy wild horses is not new. In 2017, some members of Congress pushed for the BLM to be able to euthanize captive wild horses and burros.

Our work with divergent public lands stakeholders has since yielded broad support for a non-lethal wild horse management approach with the use of proven, safe and humane fertility control at its center. That resulted in Congress calling for (though not demanding) increased fertility control use and providing additional funding for the BLM’s program starting in Fiscal Year 2020 — under the first Trump administration.

The agency has not scaled up fertility control at all, though. Instead, the BLM doubled down on capture and removal, placing captured horses and burros at greater risk.

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Tell Congress: Horses Don't Belong in Double-Deck Trailers

All House and Senate

Subject: Protective language for America's wild horses must remain in appropriations bill

Message:

I am writing as a constituent to urge you to communicate to the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee the critical need to include protective language for America’s wild horses and burros.

Language barring the Bureau of Land Management from using tax dollars to kill healthy wild horses and burros or sell them without prohibition against slaughter should be included again for Fiscal Year 2026. The House has included this protective language; it is important for the Senate to follow suit.

Failure to include that protective language would open the door for the BLM to kill tens of thousands of wild horses and burros, directly or indirectly — an inhumane, politically disastrous and wholly un-American move.

It is also important that the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program at least be funded at 2025 levels so that the commitment that Congress and the American people have made to a sustainable program is not undone.

Under the last two administrations, appropriators from both parties have called for, and made investments in, a new, comprehensive, and non-lethal management strategy for wild herds using safe, proven and humane tools — a strategy supported by a broad range of stakeholders and the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board.

These investments marked the first steps away from divisive, costly and unsustainable practices of capturing and warehousing wild horses and burros, and toward increasing levels of on-range management that are more fiscally responsible and humane.

At another tumultuous time in our nation’s history, Congress responded to a public outcry about the disappearance of wild horses by passing — unanimously — the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to protect them.

Opinion polls continue to consistently show overwhelming opposition to horse slaughter regardless of political affiliation.

There is also strong bipartisan backing for the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act (H.R. 1661 / S. 775), which would ban horse slaughter as well as the export of horses, which I also urge you to support.

Improved wild horse management and a balance of federally mandated multiple uses of our public lands is achievable. Congress should not back away from that challenge.

Tell Congress: Don't Open the Door to Killing Wild Horses, Burros

Tell Congress: Horses Don't Belong in Double-Deck Trailers

Thank You!