Photo taken by Meg Frederick on the Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area (Colo.).
The federal Bureau of Land Management seeks to remove 10,281 wild horses and burros from their home ranges during this fiscal year while treating just 1,139 with fertility control.
This continues the BLM’s failed, decades-old effort to control herd numbers by capturing horses and burros in helicopter roundups, then removing them from the range.
Return to Freedom has long advocated for a better way:
Using proven, safe and humane fertility control offers a way to slow herd growth without stopping it, reducing the frequency and size of roundups while finally moving away from removals altogether.
The public, many in Congress, and a growing number of stakeholder organizations with otherwise divergent views are on board.
The BLM insists it will use fertility control — but only after reaching an agency-set “Appropriate Management Level” of no more than 25,556 horses and burros on designated Herd Management Areas across 10 Western states.
The BLM estimated that there were 73,130 wild horses and burros on our public lands as of March 1, a slight drop from last year and the fourth decrease in five years.
At the same time, the agency’s actions have resulted in the number of wild horses and burros warehoused in off-range government holding facilities swelling to 65,000.
In the past, the cost of holding has been used to justify calls to euthanize (shoot, in all likelihood) captive wild horses or sell them without protections against slaughter. Such dated language showed up again in Project 2025.
Americans have stood strong against killing wild horses and burros again and again.
The BLM must implement a robust program of fertilit
y control now, not later. For that, we need to continue calling on Congress to hold the BLM’s feet to the fire.