Photo by Bev Pettit

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday unveiled a Fiscal Year 2018 Interior Appropriations bill that would bar the Bureau of Land Management from killing healthy wild horses and burros. The language was released as part the Fiscal Year 2018 chairmen’s recommendation and explanatory statement for the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. Senate appropriators have stood against both horse slaughter (as part of the Fiscal Year 2018 Agriculture Appropriations bill) and against allowing BLM to kill wild horses (as part of the Fiscal Year 2018 Interior bill). In July, the House Appropriations Committee first rejected language barring horse slaughter, then approved an amendment that would throw open the door to BLM killing tens of thousands of healthy unadopted wild horses and burros.

Statement from Return to Freedom: 

Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation applauds the Senate Appropriations Committee for hearing the voices of the American people and producing a Fiscal Year 2018 Interior Appropriations bill that continues to bar the Bureau of Land Management from killing healthy unadopted wild horses and burros. Some members of Congress have called for BLM to “euthanize” — shoot — wild horses as a way to remove them from the public lands from which moneyed interests seek to profit. To do so would betray decades of taxpayer support for the protection of our wild horses and ignores the deep historic and cultural connection Americans have for wild horses and burros. We urge Congress to insist that the BLM end its cruel, costly practice of rounding up and warehousing wild horses and instead aggressively invest in safe, proven and humane solutions that would give wild horses a sustainable future on the range, where they belong.

Previously:

Senate takes crucial step toward protecting wild horses! Nov. 20, 2017