The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is supposed to advise the Bureau regarding its responsibility to ensure healthy herds in the wild, but it is purposely stacked with members aligned with cattle ranching and other special interests. This Advisory Board poses a serious threat to wild horses and burros, but we will continue to advocate on their behalf, and we wanted you to know that your voices are being heard in Congress!

Despite the availability of humane and cost-effective alternatives, the BLM continues its failed policies of massive roundups and removals of wild horses and burros from our public lands and then stockpiling them in cramped, filthy, and unsheltered government holding pens and government-subsidized private (non-transparent) pastures.

In past years, the Advisory Board has voted to recommend both "euthanasia" and "unlimited sale" (sale to slaughter) of all the wild horses in government holding facilities.

Advisory Board meetings are open to the public, and we attended the last full meeting, held virtually on September 23-24, to provide comments opposing brutal roundups and slaughter during the short public comment period. As usual, the presentations during the meeting continued the absolutely false narrative of propaganda that wild horses are, or will be, dying of starvation and thirst if they are not removed. Meanwhile, private ranchers continue to graze millions of their animals on public lands, but wild horses get all the blame for range degradation.

At this meeting Advisory Board member Steven Yardley, a Utah rancher who has long been a proponent of killing the animals in holding, said "euthanasia and sale without limitation is going to seem kind" when compared to leaving them on their range where a "mass die-off" will occur if they are not removed. Of course, this is simply not true, and removing just some of the rancher's government-subsidized private animals from our public lands would save an abundance of resources for the wild horses and burros who Americans want to be protected.

However, new to this year's meeting was a different shift of the blame for BLM's wild horse and burro mismanagement; several members of the Advisory Board are now blaming Congress for listening to the wild horse and burro advocates who contact them. 

We are elated to hear them confirm that our calls to action to contact your legislators in Congress are working! We cannot let up now. Please continue to look for our alerts and take the requested action.

If you appreciate our work for wild horses and burros, please make a donation to help us continue our lifesaving advocacy for them.