It is not surprising that the special interests who benefit the most from the brutal roundups of wild horses and burros are the same people who push government agencies for their removal from our public lands. Who are the primary beneficiaries of the contracts awarded by the Bureau of Land Management’s “Wild Horse and Burro Control Services?” The answer is, livestock operators who have received hundreds of millions of dollars in the past ten years! It is time to stop the gravy train for this egregious conflict of interest!

Our tax dollars are spent on these contracts to roundup, remove, and stockpile thousands of wild horses and burros every year in despicable crowded, filthy, and disease-ridden feedlot pens. Wild horses and burros suffer and die in every stage of the roundup and incarceration process that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) puts them through.

Million-dollar deals are paid out to ruthless helicopter contractors for the savage roundups of wild equids. Millions more are paid for short-term and long-term imprisonment of these freedom-loving animals. Many of these companies have direct connections to livestock producers, with all of them benefiting from this shady system.

These abhorrent operations are conducted because the BLM feeds a constant stream of propaganda and misinformation to the media and the U.S. Congress. Their bogus claims that they are removing wild horses because there is not enough forage for them and they would starve without action have been proven false repeatedly. It is incredibly disingenuous when thousands of privately-exploited cattle and sheep are then put out onto that same wild horse area after the horses are removed. 

A vast majority of the American people overwhelmingly support protecting wild horses and burros on our public lands. We must continue to contact our legislators to demand that they stop using our taxpayer dollars to benefit the exploitative livestock industry with subsidies and fat contracts for unnecessary, barbarous, and costly wild horse and burro removals. 

We must also begin to see how cattle and sheep ranching cause harm and death not only to wild horses and burros who are removed because they “compete with” them for forage, but also to wild predators such as mountain lions, coyotes, and wolves in the US who are killed simply for being predators.

Eating and wearing the products sold by ranchers - no matter where they operate from - causes severe suffering not only to wild horses and burros, but to the sheep and cattle themselves, as well as to other wild grass eaters such as Tule elk and bison in the United States, and also kangaroos, and koalas in Australia. Cattle ranching and sheep ranching also destroy the environment here, ruin rainforests in tropical areas, and are one of the main drivers of the climate crisis. It’s easier than ever to become part of the solution.

For more information and other ways to help, visit our Wild Horses and Burros campaign.