In a rush job, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) delivered a report to Congress on April 26 that proposes slashing wild horse and burro herds to near-extinction levels through mass killing, sale to slaughter, and sterilization. It has already stirred outrage from animal rights organizations and equine advocates. The report is wrought with misinformation and outright false claims.

The agency has squandered taxpayer funds on an insane program of chasing down terrified wild horses with helicopters, often causing deaths, and penning them indefinitely in cruel holding facilities. In Defense of Animals and more than 100 organizations submitted a Unified Statement recommending affordable, safe and sustainable wild horse management. Instead of listening to the solutions supplied, the agency surged ahead with proposals that clash with public opinion and the findings of the BLM-commissioned National Academy of Sciences report. The Academy urged the BLM to support fertility control programs and to change its failing management practices. 

The BLM has spent less than one percent of its budget on safe, reversible fertility control. It continues to scapegoat wild horses for rangeland damage while ignoring the critical impacts from the use and abuse of public lands by the meat, mining, and oil and gas industries.

The BLM plan includes the removal of 50,000 wild horses and mustangs from their rangelands, the “euthanasia” and unlimited sale to slaughter of those held captive, and the dangerous sterilization of 80 percent of those remaining in the wild.

This is an election year! Contact your two United States senators and your one representative and tell them you oppose the BLM’s plan. Tell them that scientists, advocates and equine experts support alternatives that are both economically viable and humane. Wild horses and burros are not a nuisance and should not be treated as such.