Photo taken on the North Lander Herd Management Area Complex by Meg Frederick.
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The Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee has recommended allocating $143,102,000 to the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program for Fiscal Year 2025. That’s $102,000 more than its counterpart in the House of Representatives recommended earlier in July.
The proposed funding is well below the $170.9 million requested by the BLM, but it does appear that the wild horse budget will be spared the large cuts looming for other programs.
Congress allocated $142 million for wild horse management in 2024, down $6 million from 2023.
The Senate subcommittee’s report language directs the BLM to “continue efforts to reduce the wild horse population on the range through a humane and sustainable multi-pronged approach of fertility control, targeted removals, off-range holding, and adoptions.”
The report leans into BLM-like language in emphasizing that “the landscape cannot support the populations four times in excess of the Appropriate Management Level, and that the Bureau should scale up (removals).”
With nearly 70% of the BLM program’s budget now going to care of captured wild horses living in off-range holding facilities, the House and Senate recommendations would leave relatively little money for steering wild horse management in a better direction.
The Senate subcommittee expresses concern over the cost of holding, noting that it reduces money for removals and fertility control.
Fertility control support
On a more positive note, the BLM is “encouraged” by senators to “pursue public-private partnerships to support an increase in the use of humane fertility control, reapplication in previously-treated herds, and applying such treatments in additional herd management areas.”
For more than two decades, Return to Freedom has used safe, proven and humane fertility control at its wild horse sanctuary and called for it to be utilized on the range to slow herd growth and end the costly, traumatic capture and warehousing of wild horses.
The Senate report does not designate funding specifically for fertility control. In contrast, the House report set aside $11 million, prioritizing existing fertility control, while also leaving the door open to money being used on permanent sterilization efforts.
RTF strongly opposes surgical sterilization. Previous agency attempts to sterilize wild horses have only led to litigation, not progress toward more humane and sustainable on-range herd management.
More positives in the report include the Senate subcommittee calling for:
- a continued prohibition of killing of healthy wild horses and burros
- the BLM to comply with its Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP)
- continued quarterly reports to Congress.
The Subcommittee also “appreciates the (National Park Service’s) decision to continue maintaining a genetically diverse herd of horses in (Theodore Roosevelt National Park).” NPS officials had been considering removing South Dakota’s only wild herd before bowing to pressure from the public and elected officials to keep horses in the park.
The Senate report also directs the BLM to “implement and enforce safeguards in the adoption program, including pre-approval of applicants and post-adoption compliance checks.”
The BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program has resulted in instances documented by RTF and others of adopters receiving a horse’s title and $1,000 cash after one year, then selling horses at auctions where they can be purchased and shipped to slaughter.
RTF continues to call for the elimination of the incentive program or, at the very least, the creation of stronger safeguards for adopted wild horses and burros, including replacing the cash incentives with vouchers for training, vet care and other needs.
Background
That BLM has long tried and failed to reach its own arbitrary population target of about 27,000 wild horses and burros on designated Herd Management Areas across 10 Western states. In 2020, the agency said in a report to Congress that it would use fertility control — but only after reaching its “Appropriate Management Level.”
Population modeling has shown that immediately implementing fertility control alongside any removal that the BLM is already conducting is the only realistic way to stabilize herd growth, replace removals as the agency’s primary management tool and save taxpayer dollars over the long run.
From 2020-23, the BLM removed more than 50,000 wild horses and burros from their home ranges while treating just 2,099 mares with fertility control, then releasing them.
That pattern continues this year, with a goal of removing 19,614 horses and burros from their home ranges while treating 710.
As of April, more than 63,000 wild horses and burros under BLM’s management were living in often overcrowded corrals or on leased pastures at a cost to taxpayers of more than $108.5 million annually. The agency estimated in March that there were 73,520 wild horses and burros still roaming the public lands that it manages.
