Overview: The BLM Budget Debate

 

  • The Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act has been weakened by amendment over the years, thanks to the livestock lobby.  As amended, it allows for the destruction of "excess" horses in the "most humane and cost-effective manner possible."  It also allows for the sale without restriction of any horse aged 10 or over, or any horse that has been put up for adoption three times but has not been adopted. This opens them up for purchase for slaughter. 
  • In most years, Congress includes language in the Interior Appropriations Bill to prevent these lethal provisions from being implemented. This language prohibits the BLM from destroying healthy wild horses and burros and from selling them to anyone who intends to sell them to slaughter. 
  • This year, the Interior Department's 2018 budget request asked Congress to lift both provisions preventing the killing and slaughter of wild horses. (See also BLM budget detail.
  • BLM asked Congress to lift the ban on slaughtering and killing wild horses and burros (BLM Budget Justification - relevant language on II-4.)
  • The House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee reported out the Interior Appropriations Bill to the full committee with the anti-slaughter and killing provisions in place.  However when the bill came before the full House Appropriations Committee, Representative Chris Stewart (R-UT) offered an amendment that stripped the bill of the provision prohibiting the destruction of healthy horses but left in place the prohibition on selling them for slaughter. (See Stewart Amendment on last page of this link.)
  • The Stewart Amendment modified the appropriations bill as follows:
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1.     1  fied amount of money in support of the project may be

2.     2  carried out by the Bureau on a reimbursable basis. Appro-

3.     3  priations herein made shall not be available for the de-

4.     4  struction of healthy, unadopted, wild horses and burros

5.     5  in the care of the Bureau or its contractors or for the

6.     6  sale of wild horses and burros that results in their destruc-

7.     7  tion for processing into commercial products, including for human consumption.