It’s one sentence among tens of thousands encompassing 900 pages, but when it comes to the future of and welfare of the nation’s wild horses and burros, it is frightening and to be taken seriously.

“Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”

The “BLM” is the Bureau of Land Management and “these animals” are the estimated 73,000 wild horses and burros under BLM control. The sentence appears in Project 2025.

According to its website, “Project 2025 is a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to take down the Deep State and return the government to the people. Its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, published in April 2023, is a product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from around the country. The book offers a menu of policy suggestions to meet our country’s deepest challenges and put America back on track…” It was published in April, 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in anticipation of Trump winning the 2024 election. It was not written by Trump and Trump is under no obligation to follow it. It is, nonetheless, a road map for the President to follow as he pushes his conservative agenda. The argument being made by The Heritage Foundation and others is that the wild horse population has gotten so big as to become a burden for the government.

Another passage from Project 2025: “There are 95,000 wild horses and burros roaming nearly 32 million acres in the West–triple what scientists and land management experts say the range can support. These animals face starvation and death from lack of forage and water. The population has more than doubled in just the past 10 years and continues to grow at a rate of 10 to 15 percent annually. This number includes the more than 47,000 animals the BLM has already gathered from public lands, at a cost to the American taxpayer of nearly $50 million annually to care for them in off-range corrals.” “

“With this administration, we’re scared that wild horses will be slaughtered,” said Chris Heyde, lobbyist for wild horse and burro advocacy group Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation. “Will this be encouraged as a way of getting rid of costs? That was put forward in Project 2025. This is very scary because (Trump) has actually followed it to the letter so far. Russell Vought, the guy who wrote Project 2025–even though they claimed there was no connection to Trump–was caught on tape admitting Trump knew about it and supported it. He’s now the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Did he write that section on the wild horses? I don’t know that. But he was the author of the whole paper. That’s the concern because we are seeing a slash-and-burn approach to things. This could come up.”

The Office of Management and Budget serves the President of the United States in overseeing the implementation of his vision across the Executive Branch. OMB’s mission is to assist the President in meeting his policy, budget, management and regulatory objectives and to fulfill the agency’s statutory responsibilities.

“We are taking it very seriously,” said Celeste Carlisle, the biology and science program manager for the advocacy group Return to Freedom. “The way that Project 2025 frames the wild horse issue gives it the desperation. They say they’ve ‘invaded private and permitted public lands,’ and ‘turned sod into concrete.’ These are arguments that can easily be used to justify euthanasia. As if there’s no other way. What a tragedy.”

She says there are many inaccuracies in the way Project 2025 has framed the issue. 

“Project 2025’s section about wild horse and burro management isn’t accurate,” Carlisle said. “We have used our public lands in lots of ways, through many extractive uses that have been hard on the land. Making horses seem the only, and a desperate problem, with no way out other than euthanasia, for one thing isn’t true, and for another thing, falls back onto a call for euthanasia for the sake of management that has been a stopping point for compromise and forward progress since the method was tried in the early 80’s. There are ways to manage wild horses and burros, even at this challenging juncture, comprehensively, sustainably, and non-lethally. Not only that, but broad, bipartisan organizations support and embrace it.”

The group Friends of Animals suggests contacting Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. When he was Governor of North Dakota, he was seen as a supporter of wild horses. He backed efforts to protect the herd at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park as said that wild horses are “an iconic part of the Badlands experience.” They also suggest contacting your own elected representative.

What Trump and the authors of Project 2025 might not have taken into account is that the public at large would no doubt be outraged if the wild horses were euthanized. According to the group American Wild Horse Conservation, a 2017 poll revealed that 83% of Trump voters and 77% of Hillary Clinton voters supported protecting wild horses and burros from slaughter.

“This is very alarming,” said Oscar Gonzalez, a member of the California Horse Racing Board and a horse advocate. “I never thought that I’d see something like this. Horses are the foundation of our nation in terms of what they’ve done. They’ve helped us win wars and build frontiers and create communities. True Americans honor horses. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to how best to manage the wild horses, but to even think about disposing of them is misguided. In my opinion, it’s un-American. Whoever put this part of the document together has no understanding whatsoever about the beauty of horses and what they’ve done for our great nation. This should be a rallying cry to all horsemen and horsewomen around the country that we have to monitor this issue very carefully. I believe in engaging with members of Congress and other elected officials, especially where there are large concentrations of wild horses. I’ll continue to do my share.”

Said Heyde: “I think the public backlash would be significant. The pubic is already on full alert when it comes to things that don’t seem to be part of our American values and will push the clock back instead of moving progress forward. If you want to talk about an issue that can unify rural and urban, Democrats and Republicans, this is the kind of issue. We pay tribute to horses. There could not be a more unifying issue. I’m confident that when this is known people will bring this up to their members of Congress. Everyone needs to reach out to an equine organization and lend their resources and time. We have a lot of work to do to make sure our policy makers know what horses, wild or not, mean to us as a county. I guarantee you all hell will break loose if they even suggest killing these wild horses. That will be the most contentious issue of my career.”