Burros at RTF’s San Luis Obispo, Calif., satellite sanctuary.
Wild horses update: The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted 397-28 to approve an Interior Department appropriations package including key protections for wild horses and burros.
The funding package is expected to pass the U.S. Senate and be signed into law next week.
The bill includes $144 million for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program (a $2 million increase) and language barring the agency from killing healthy wild horses and burros.
The president’s budget proposal, released last May, failed to include that standard protective language. His proposal also called for a cut of more than 25% to the BLM program.
That would have threatened the lives of the more than 64,000 captured wild horses and burros that live in off-range government holding facilities.
Unfortunately, the Interior package passed Thursday would allow up to $11 million to be used for permanent sterilization, which we strongly oppose.
Horse slaughter update: The Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act picked up two more House cosponsors this week, increasing the total number to 222.
That number would allow the pass with a simple majority (218) — if it’s brought up for a vote.
The SAFE Act would ban horse slaughter in the United States and halt the pipeline of American horses out of the country to foreign slaughterhouses.
We continue to push for a vote as well as to get the language added to the Farm Bill as another way to try to get a horse slaughter ban signed into law at long last.