Wild horses at a watering hole on the Salt Wells Herd Area in Wyoming. Photo by Meg Fredrerick.
The co-chairs of the Congressional Wild Horse Caucus and Congressional Animal Protection Caucus this week urged House and Senate appropriators to protect healthy wild horses and burros from being killed by government agencies or sold to slaughter in Interior funding bills.
The president’s 2026 budget proposal omits long-standing, bipartisan protective language. Its absence in final funding bills would open the door to the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to euthanize (shoot, in all likelihood) captured wild horses and burros or sell them without protections against slaughter.
“We were concerned to see that the recently released Appendix for the 2026 Budget did not include provisions that explicitly bar the commercial destruction and use of lethal control on wild equines, and trust that this was simply an omission given the broad bipartisan support that exists for protecting America’s iconic herds,” the nine representatives wrote in a bipartisan letter dated June 13.
“These protections have historically been included in the base text of Interior Appropriations bills, signaling the strong support among lawmakers for ensuring federally protected wild horses cannot be culled as a ‘management’ approach. Versions of such protections have largely been in place since Fiscal Year 1988.”
The letter to the co-chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees’ Interior Subcommittees was signed by Reps. Dina Titus, D-Nev., Mike Quigley, D-Ill., Jamie Raskin, D-Md., David Schweikert, R-Ariz., Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Sharice Davids, D-Kan.
Return to Freedom is grateful for the representatives’ ongoing support of America’s wild horses and burros.
We must ensure this critically important protective language is included in the final bill to fund the Department of Interior and the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program!
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 (formerly Twitter), BlueSky, Tik Tok, Youtube and LinkedIn.