Photo by Meg Frederick
Good news: The House House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee released an Appropriations bill recommendations including protective language for wild horses on July 15. The Senate Interior Subcommittee included protective language in its bill, as well, releasing its Appropriations bill recommendations on July 24. Both recommended keeping for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program roughly flat when compared to the $142 million allocated in 2025. This is a sign that Congress continues to support a multi-pronged approach to wild horse and burro management, given that many programs across the government will likely large funding cuts for 2026. Now, we need the BLM to implement proven, safe and humane fertility control at a robust level to slow (not stop) herd growth so that at long last management moves away from the failed, decades-old practice of capture and removal to try to control herd numbers.
Good news: The House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee on Tuesday voted to approve a 2026 funding bill language that includes critical protections for wild horses and burros that the president omitted from his budget proposal.
This spring’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) population estimate for wild horses and burros showed a decrease for the fourth time in five years, from 73,520 in March 2023 to 73,130 as of March 1, 2024.
The number of federally protected wild horses and burros living not on our public lands but instead in off-range government holding facilities stands at 62,853 — including 23,637 in often overcrowded, unsheltered corrals — as of June.
Those numbers are a direct result of the BLM’s failed, decades-old attempt to manage herd numbers by capturing wild horses in controversial helicopter roundups and removing them from the range.
That, despite growing calls from Congress, public lands stakeholders and the public to implement proven, safe and humane fertility control to slow herd growth. Doing so would reduce the size and frequency of roundups while moving toward making fertility control the agency’s primary management tool.
The lives of those captured wild horses and burros are at greatest risk should the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program face budget cuts.
President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal includes $106.7 million for the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program — slashing its budget by more than 25 percent.
At best, that would cover the cost of caring for the captive wild horses and burros living in off-range holding facilities. The BLM spent $101 million on holding last year.
Of greatest concern: the president’s budget proposal also omits what had become standard protective language barring the BLM from killing healthy wild horses and burros or selling them without protections against slaughter.
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 (shoot, in all likelihood) 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.
Unfortunately, the BLM doubled down on removing wild horses from their home ranges. It told Congress that it would implement fertility control — but only after it reached the population targets, or “Appropriate Management Levels,” set by the agency.
- From 2019-23, the BLM removed 57,997 wild horses and burros from the range while treating and releasing just 4,936 with some form of fertility control.
- For 2025, the BLM plans to remove 10,281 wild horses and burros while treating 1,139.
The BLM’s goal is to reach an “Appropriate Management Level” (AML) of no more than 25,556 — a reduction of 1,229 from 2024.
The agency-set target amounts to just 256 animals more than the agency estimated were left on federally managed public lands in 1971. That’s when Congress unanimously passed the Wild and Freedom and Burros Act to protect these “fast disappearing … living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West … as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.”
Since last year, the acreage designated for wild horses and burros has also been reduced by 1.3 million, down to 25.6 million among the 245 million acres overseen by the BLM.
RTF and other wild horse advocates are currently awaiting a federal appeals court ruling on the BLM’s decision to strip nearly 2 million acres from wild horse use in Southwestern Wyoming.
The BLM now spends more than 66% of its wild horse program budget on off-range holding. That leaves little room to implement the robust fertility control program needed to slow the costly cycle of capture and removal.
The BLM has also made little progress in leasing additional cost-efficient pastureland for captured wild horses, as Congress has urged.
We are working with colleague organizations and other rangeland stakeholders to lobby members of Congress to include protective language protecting wild horses and burros from being euthanized (shot, in all likelihood) in its Interior Appropriations bills for 2026.
Killing wild horses and burros would be a political non-starter — a foolish waste of time and money.
History shows that Americans will not accept the killing of healthy wild horses and burros or shipping them off by the thousands to Mexican or Canadian slaughterhouses to die in often substandard conditions.
Indeed, Congress unanimously passed and President Nixon signed the law that provides a measure of protection for wild herds, the 1971 Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act, following an unprecedented letter-writing campaign.
Later, the BLM made it agency policy not to euthanize wild horses and burros for management purposes after putting down 47 wild horses in 1981-82.
And polls consistently show more than 80 percent of voters oppose horse slaughter.
We strongly urge Congress to keep supporting a better way of managing wild horses — an iconic symbol of freedom and of American history — and demand that the BLM immediately embrace that change in direction.
Ways you can take action to protect wild horses and burros
- Send a letter to your members of Congress demanding no-kill language for wild horses and burros is included in spending bills
- Call (202) 224-3121. Urge your members of Congress (three calls: two U.S. senators and one U.S. representative) to:
- tell the House and Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittees to include language preventing the government from killing healthy wild horses and burros or selling them without protections against slaughter;
- support the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, which would ban horse slaughter and the export of American horses for slaughter (if you’re asked, bill numbers are H.R. 1661 in the House, S. 775 in the Senate).
- Send a letter urging Congress to pass the SAFE Act.
- Donate to our Wild Horse Defense Fund. It supports our Washington, D.C., lobbying efforts, grassroots advocacy and selective litigation.
- Help us spread the word — please like and share our posts on your social media platforms of choice! You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, X, BlueSky, Tik Tok, Youtube and LinkedIn.