Return to Freedom: Congress must push BLM forward on wild horse management

LOMPOC, Calif., March 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation on Monday urged lawmakers to push wild horse management forward on public lands, not let it take a step back. Congress last week approved a 4% cut to the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Program as part of a $467.5 billion spending package to avert a government shutdown.

"We urge Congress to support consistent funding increases while firmly holding the agency responsible for immediately implementing safe and proven fertility control that can stabilize herd numbers and end decades of failed, inhumane management by capture-and-removal," said Neda DeMayo, president of Return to Freedom (RTF), a national nonprofit wild horse and burro advocacy organization. "Changing the BLM's antiquated management of America's wild horses, burros and their habitats cannot wait any longer."

The Fiscal Year 2024 funding package approved by the House and Senate this week includes:

—$141,972,000 for the Wild Horse and Burro Program;

—a continuing prohibition against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service destroying healthy wild horses or burros or selling them to slaughter;

—language continuing an effective ban on horse slaughter.

While the cut is relatively modest, it recalls periods (as from 2014-19) when the program's budget remained largely flat. With more than 60% of the program budget going toward the care of captured horses in off-range holding facilities, little funding remained for range management, restoration, personnel, and administration, let alone fertility control.

Even as the agency continued removing horses from the range, the BLM pointed to those off-range holding costs and year-to-year funding uncertainty as cause for delaying changes. Congress boosted the program's budget by 85 percent after 2019, funding needed to support the use of fertility control, because of diverse stakeholder efforts.

For more than two decades, RTF has modeled fertility control use at its wild horse sanctuary and called for it to be utilized on the range to end the costly, traumatic capture and warehousing of wild horses.

More than 64,000 wild horses and burros now live in often-crowded government corrals or on leased pastures, costing more than $109 million annually.

Population modeling has shown that immediately implementing fertility control alongside any removal that the BLM conducts is the only way to stabilize herd growth, replace removals as the agency's primary management tool and save taxpayer dollars over the long run.

Yet the agency's actions have changed very little. Between now and September, the BLM intends to remove 11,112 wild horses and burros from the range while treating just 219 with fertility control.

Regarding horse slaughter, RTF appreciates Congress continuing to prohibit the Department of Agriculture from paying horsemeat inspectors. That budget language has kept horse slaughter plants from operating since 2007.

It does not affect the export of horses for slaughter, however. Last year, 20,283 American equines were shipped to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada.

RTF continues to advocate for the anti-slaughter provision to be made permanent and for the passage of the Save America's Forgotten Equines Act (H.R. 3475 / S. 2037). The bipartisan legislation would ban both horse slaughter in the United States and shipping horses to other countries for slaughter.

Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation (RTF) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to wild horse preservation through sanctuary, education, conservation, and advocacy since 1998. It also operates the American Wild Horse Sanctuary at three California locations, caring for more than 420 wild horses and burros. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for updates about wild horses and burros on the range and at our sanctuary.

SOURCE Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation