Photo taken in Wyoming’s Red Desert by Meg Frederick.
Good news! The House included protective appropriations language for 2026 on July 15. The Senate included protective language in its appropriations bill, released on July 24.
Originally posted June 11, 2025
America’s wild horses and burros urgently need your help!
The president’s 2026 budget proposal does not include annual language barring the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from using our tax dollars to kill healthy wild horses and burros or sell them to slaughter.
We must ensure this critically important protective language is included in the final bill to fund the Department of Interior and the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program!
Ways you can take action to protect wild horses and burros:
- Send a letter to your members of Congress demanding no-kill language for wild horses and burros is included in spending bills
- Call (202) 224-3121. Urge your members of Congress (three calls: two U.S. senators and one U.S. representative) to:
- tell the House and Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittees to include language preventing the government from killing healthy wild horses and burros or selling them without protections against slaughter;
- support the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, which would ban horse slaughter and the export of American horses for slaughter (if you’re asked, bill numbers are H.R. 1661 in the House, S. 775 in the Senate).
- Send a letter urging Congress to pass the SAFE Act.
- Donate to our Wild Horse Defense Fund. It supports our Washington, D.C., lobbying efforts, grassroots advocacy and selective litigation.
- Help us spread the word — please like and share our posts on your social media platforms of choice! You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), BlueSky, Tik Tok, Youtube and LinkedIn.
Background
In addition to the omission of this important protective language for wild horses and burros, the president’s budget proposal would authorize $106.7 million for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program, dramatically slashing its budget by more than 25 percent.
At best, that would cover the cost of caring for the 62,853 captive wild horses and burros living in off-range holding facilities. The BLM spent $101 million on holding last year.
The threat of allowing the BLM to kill healthy wild horses is not new. In 2017, some members of Congress pushed for the BLM to be able to euthanize (shoot, in all likelihood) captive wild horses and burros.
Our work with divergent public lands stakeholders has since yielded broad support for a non-lethal wild horse management approach with the use of proven, safe and humane fertility control at its center.
That resulted in Congress calling for (though not demanding) increased fertility control use and providing additional funding for the BLM’s program starting in Fiscal Year 2020 — under the first Trump administration.
The agency has not scaled up fertility control at all, though. Instead, the BLM doubled down on capture and removal.
It’s also important that we continue to advocate for the passage of the SAFE Act, for the good of all of America’s horses but for wild horses, in particular, at this moment.
Some good news: the budget proposal does include language prohibiting the U.S. Department of Agriculture from hiring horsemeat inspectors. That would continue a year-to-year ban on horse slaughter within U.S. borders, which is important, but export of horses to Mexico and Canada for slaughter can still occur.