Take action: Tell Congress to oppose budget proposals that threaten wild horses!

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Wild horses crowded into a temporary corral after being captured during the Cedar Mountain Herd Management Area helicopter roundup in Utah earlier this year. President Trump’s budget proposal would put all captured wild horses and burros at risk of euthanasia or being sold to slaughter. Photo by Steve Paige.

 

America’s wild horses and burros need your voice.

On May 23, President Donald Trump released a 2018 budget proposal that includes provisions that place thousands of captured wild horses and burros at grave risk of taxpayer-funded euthanasia and of being sold to kill buyers.

These proposals include:

  • “the ability to conduct sales without limitation,” eliminating the current policy of captured wild horses and burros being offered for sale without limitation when they reach 10 years of age or fail to be adopted three times;
  • removing “language restricting  BLM’s  ability to use all of the management tools authorized in the 1971 Act,” including euthanasia and unlimited sales, scrapping Congress’s prohibitions in previous appropriations bills that barred BLM from euthanizing healthy animals;
  • slashing the Wild Horse and Burro Program budget by 12%, about $9.7 million, despite it making up a tiny fraction of the federal budget;
  • allowing the transfer of captured wild horses and burros to other government agencies in a way that strips them of the protections under the Wild Horse and Burro Act and lacks sufficient protections for the animals’ future well-being.

It’s critical that the American people urge Congress to oppose short-sighted, inhumane answers to the challenge of managing wild horses and burros.

For more information about the budget proposals, please click here.

We must urge our representatives to pursue humane, on-the-range management solutions. These include the use of safe, proven fertility control in combination with revisiting population targets based on a fair interpretation of multiple-use land management, providing incentives for ranchers who reduce livestock grazing in wild horse Herd Management Areas. and improving range stewardship.

Take action: Send a letter to Congress!