Nevada Rep. Titus Leads Effort to Save Forest Service Wild Horses from Slaughter

Washington, DC (March 28, 2019) . . . Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), who hails from the state with over half of the nation’s wild horses, has requested language in Fiscal Year 2020 Interior Appropriations legislation to protect federally-protected wild horses from a Forest Service plan to sell them without limitation on slaughter. Rep. Titus seeks to extend to the Forest Service a ban on slaughter currently only imposed on the Bureau of Land Management for wild horses and burros under its jurisdiction. 

In a letter to the Interior Appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Titus also requested legislative language to require the Bureau of Land Management to utilize scientifically recommended humane birth control as an alternative to costly and cruel roundup and removal of wild horses from the range.

“Congresswoman Titus is one of the great champions of America’s wild horses and we are deeply grateful for her strong leadership and steadfast support,” said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Campaign, the nation’s largest wild horse preservation organization.

The protections sought by Rep. Titus are urgently needed in light of a Forest Service plan to sell wild horses captured from the Modoc National Forest in California without limitation, which will result in their slaughter. The Forest Service plan, announced last fall, marks a radical departure from past agency policy and has prompted widespread condemnation from the public, California political leaders including U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Assemblyman Todd Gloria and 22 of his colleagues in the California legislature.

Rep. Titus is also acting on behalf of Nevadans, 86 percent of whom agree that wild horses are important symbols for their state and the nation that should be humanely managed, not slaughtered.

In addition to protecting wild horses and burros from slaughter, Rep. Titus seeks to encourage humane and fiscally sound management practices to reduce population growth rates on the range through the use of birth control. In 2013, the National Academy of Sciences recommended fertility control as a more affordable option than continuing to remove wild horses from the range, however, the BLM still spends zero percent of its budget on this scientifically proven management approach.

The American Wild Horse Campaign is the nation’s leading wild horse protection organization, with more than 700,000 supporters and followers nationwide.

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