Photo taken on the Salt Wells Herd Management Area by Meg Frederick.

The looming government shutdown would provide a reprieve for some wild horses and burros facing removal from the range.

All non-essential personnel would be furloughed and the government would stay closed until the Republican-controlled government can come up with a solution funding the government on a short- or long-term basis.

• Bureau of Land Management personnel would continue caring for the more than 62,000 wild captured wild horses and burros living in off-range government holding facilities.
• Roundups would be paused, like the helicopter roundup on the Devil’s Garden Plateau Wild Horse Territory in Northern California, where 255 wild horses have been captured and seven killed.

The White House Budget Office is threatening broad layoffs if there’s a shutdown. That could affect wild horse management and other important public lands programs.

Congress’s inability to pass annual appropriations bills makes clear that process is not how lawmakers ought to be deciding with the fate of America’s wild horses and burros – as well as domestic horses, in the case of slaughter.

Each day that passes in a shutdown represents further inaction.

All the while, kill buyers will keep shipping domestic and some wild horses that have fallen through the cracks to Mexican or Canadian slaughterhouses.

The annual funding mess also forces advocates to work to have Congress insert protective language included in appropriations bills, year after year, for wild horses and on horse slaughter.

It’s all the more reason why we need a viable, long-term plan utilizing proven, humane management methods to keep America’s wild horses on the range, where they belong.

It’s also why legislation like the SAFE Act is important: It would place a lasting ban on horse slaughter as well as the export of horses for slaughter.

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