Photo by Meg Frederick
House and Senate appropriators today released a final Fiscal Year 2026 funding language that includes key protections for wild horses and burros and rejects proposed cuts to the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program.
We’re grateful for those decisions. We’re also thankful for appropriators’ continued support of proven, safe and humane fertility control — a key tool for which we’ve long advocated.
The proposed funding package for the Department of the Interior:
bars the BLM from euthanizing healthy wild horses and burros.
That standard language was not included in the president’s budget proposal. Had it been omitted, it would have placed in jeopardy the lives of tens of thousands of captured wild horses and burros.
allocates $144 million for the wild horse program, a $2 million increase.
That compares to $106.7 million proposed by the president — an amount that would have slashed the wild horse program’s budget by 25% and placed it near the $101 million the agency spent in 2024 caring for wild horses and burros living in off-range holding facilities.
includes $11 million for fertility control.
Used correctly, fertility control can slow population growth without stopping it, replacing capture and removal as the BLM’s main management tool.
Unfortunately, the bill’s guiding report language for that money continues previous House language allowing for “permanent sterilization.”
We strongly oppose sterilization, especially for wild mares. We will continue to do so in our lobbying efforts and in court, if need be.
Invasive sterilization surgeries for mares are not only opposed by the public, they are dangerous, painful and costly.
Courts have halted BLM plans to sterilize wild horses after being sued by us and others. Those fights are a distraction from scaling up readily available fertility control, which enjoys public and broad stakeholder support.