4 days ago
Trump's budget a ‘bullet to the head' of America's wild horses, say animal activists
A band of wild horses in the Northern Nevada Virginia Range. (Photo courtesy of the American Wild Horse Campaign)
Advocates for America's wild horses are finding little beauty to behold in Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would slash funding for the Bureau of Land Management's Wild Horse and Burro program by 25% and allow the slaughter of some 64,000 federally protected wild horses in government holding facilities.
'The President's budget will greatly endanger wild horses and burros,' Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, said in a statement to the Current. 'I am deeply concerned by how these cuts will impact the care of these beloved creatures. Even more worrying is the omission of the long-standing provision against horse slaughter.'
The proposal, horse and burro advocates note, mirrors Trump's 2017 budget, which initially called for a 30% cut to the program's funding and the elimination of protections against slaughter. Congress restored the protections against killing the animals and augmented funding.
'Typically, the president's appropriations bill contains a provision prohibiting horse slaughter. The Trump budget bill does not have this provision, opening the door to animals being sold off for slaughter,' said Dick Cooper, a spokesman for Titus.
The budget proposal is straight from the pages of Project 2025, the ultra-conservative manifesto of which Trump once claimed ignorance, but has since adopted de facto as a blueprint for his policies.
'What is happening to these once-proud beasts of burden is neither compassionate nor humane, and what these animals are doing to federal lands and fragile ecosystems is unacceptable,' says Project 2025, which asserted 'the uncontrolled growth of wild horses and burros poses an existential threat to public lands.'
More than half of the nation's wild horses, estimated between 70,000 and 95,000, are in Nevada, notes Project 2025. 'Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.'
The policy is an 'attack on animal welfare and America's public lands,' according to American Wild Horse Conservation (AWHC), a wild horse advocacy organization.
'This budget would be a bullet to the head of America's wild horses if passed by Congress,' said Suzanne Roy, executive director of AWHC. 'Slaughter is a barbaric solution to a fundamentally broken federal program.'
The current program is focused on what critics contend are inhumane roundups that end in the warehousing of the creatures in government holding facilities.
A better solution, say horse advocates, is increasing fertility control efforts and restoring habitat.
Last month, Titus announced the formation of the Wild Horse Congressional Caucus, 'to encourage federal policies for more humane treatment of wild horses and burros,' according to a news release.
Days later, Titus and 82 members of Congress urged a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to craft legislation requiring the BLM to spend at least 10% of the Wild Horse and Burro program's $140 million budget on fertility control in additional herd management areas.
'The letter included several requests but notably included language maintaining the prohibition on the sale or adoption of healthy wild horses and burros that results in their destruction,' Titus said in a news release.
Titus has opposed the BLM's use of aircraft in roundups. The U.S. has paid helicopter companies $57.4 million for roundups since 2006, according to Titus, a process she has attempted to ban.
'Scientific research has shown that more humane and cost-effective alternatives, like fertility control, are equally effective in controlling equine populations,' according to the May statement from Titus announcing the Wild Horse caucus. 'The BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program, however, currently spends less than four percent of its budget on these methods.'
Diverse interests, ranging from cattle ranchers to animal activists, have called for vast reductions to wild horse populations, which they contend are three times the number public lands can accommodate.
'The greatest threat to our wild horses and burros and our public lands right now isn't the BLM, it's not cattle, ranching or mining interests. It's not animal advocates. It's climate change and the new reality is fast settling in,' Stephanie Boyles Griffin, the chief scientist of the Humane Society of the United States' (now Humane World for Animals') wildlife protection department, told Reuters in 2021.
Americans, deeply divided on a plethora of topics, are on common ground when it comes to wild horses, says AWHC, which commissioned a 2017 poll that revealed 83% of Trump voters supported protecting wild horses and burros from slaughter, compared with 77% of Hillary Clinton's supporters.
'After decades of costly and ineffective roundups, the BLM now stockpiles more wild horses in government pens than remain free on the range,' said Roy in a news release. 'Americans deserve a better federal plan that genuinely tackles off-range holding issues without resorting to slaughter.'
