Wild horses on the Salt Wells Herd Area in Wyoming. Photo by Meg Frederick.
The president’s 2026 budget proposal, released today, does not include a prohibition against the government killing healthy wild horses and burros.
Return to Freedom is deeply disappointed and concerned by the omission of this important protective language, which had become standard in federal budgets.
This shows a lack of careful consideration for the time and financial commitment that Congress and the American people have put into advancing viable, non-lethal solutions for managing federally protected wild horses and burros.
RTF will work with Congress and other stakeholders to ensure this critically important language protecting wild horses and burros is included in any final bill approved.
The Trump budget (see page 501) would provide $106.7 million for the Bureau of Land Management’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 64,756 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 agency 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.
The agency has not scaled up fertility control at all, though. Instead, the BLM doubled down on capture and removal.
The budget proposal would prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture from hiring horsemeat inspectors, which would continue a year-to-year ban on horse slaughter within U.S. borders.
Work continues on the bipartisan SAFE Act, legislation that would place a lasting ban on horse slaughter as well as exporting American horses for slaughter.