Under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would save $4 million on wild horse and burro management by eliminating restrictions on sales and other management options. But some advocates say the cuts put those equids at risk for euthanasia and slaughter.
The Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 protects wild horses and burros and places them under BLM jurisdiction. The act does not contain language prohibiting the agency from selling wild horses and burros without reservation—that is, to any buyer—or euthanizing animals for which there is no adoption demand.
From 1988 through 2004 and in 2010, appropriations bills forbid wild horse and burro euthanasia or their unrestricted sale. The current BLM adoption contract forbids buyers from knowingly selling or giving away animals for processing into commercial products; those who do sell or otherwise transfer horses for processing face federal charges. In 2013 the agency stiffened its purchase requirements after reports surfaces that a Colorado livestock hauler purchased more than 1,700 BLM horses and subsequently sold them for slaughter in Mexico.
The fiscal 2018 proposed federal budget reduces the BLM's budget for its wild horse and burro program to $79 million from $80.4 million in fiscal 2017. About $4 million of the $10 million reduction would be derived from “savings resulting from unrestricted sales,” the administration's 2018 Budget Justifications document said. The remainder of the funding decrease would be achieved by reducing gathers, reducing birth control treatments, and other activities.
“The long-term goal is to realign program costs and animal populations and more manageable levels, enabling the BLM to reorient the (wild horse and burro) program back to these traditional management strategies,” the document said.
But some wild horse advocates say that permitting limitless sales and euthanasia could result in herd dissemination.
“The agency also wants to drive wild horse and burro population levels down to near extinction levels, based on arbitrary population limits that the National Academy of Sciences has criticized as having ‘no-science based rationale,’ ” opined Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. “This outrageous … budget is completely counter to the will of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose horse slaughter and support protecting mustangs and burros on our Western public lands.”
The organization is asking Congress to reject the administration's proposed BLM budget, and to increase the use of contraceptive vaccinations on wild herds.
In a written statement, the BLM said its first goal is to find good homes for as many gathered horses and burros as possible. At the same time, the agency is committed to continuing its research on better contraceptive vaccinations.
Meanwhile, a BLM representative told The Horse that “with few natural predators and limited tools for controlling herd growth, our nation's wild horse and burro herds are chronically overpopulated and increasing exponentially. To address these challenges, the President’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal requests the authority to use all management tools provided by the Act. This authority includes removing some restrictions on the sale and disposition of excess animals.”
