
Photo: Meg Frederick
Both the House and Senate Appropriations Interior Subcommittees have stepped up and included critical protections for wild horses and burros in their 2026 appropriations bills.
The president’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, released in June, left out standard protections that bar the Bureau of Land Management from killing healthy wild horses or selling them without protection against slaughter.
Had Congress followed suit, it would have jeopardized the lives of more than 62,000 captured wild horses and burros living in off-range government holding facilities.
We’re also grateful that appropriators kept wild horse funding roughly flat at a time when other federal programs are having their funding slashed dramatically.
The president’s proposal would have cut the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program funding by 25 percent, increasing pressure to use lethal tools.
By comparison, the House included $144 million for the Wild Horse and Burro Program — up $2 million from this year — while the Senate opted for $141.9 million.
By doing so, appropriators have shown continued support for a new direction for the management of wild herds on our public lands, one utilizing proven, safe and humane fertility control to slow (not stop) population growth.
Unfortunately, the BLM remains focused on its failed cycle of capture and removal, telling lawmakers it will use fertility control but only after it reaches the population targets the agency has set.
Population modeling by ecologists – and the BLM’s own history — has shown that will not work. Only by scaling up fertility control immediately can removals and long-term holding be phased out.
We must keep urging Congress to hold the BLM’s feet to the fire on the robust implementation of fertility control if we want to keep wild horses and burros on the range, where they belong.