There are areas in the West where herds of wild horses live on a small portion of public lands.  They are orders of magnitude outnumbered by privately owned cattle and sheep that graze on the majority of public lands.  The Bureau of Land Management is chartered to "protect, manage and control" wild horses and burros, but the cattle/sheep interests are the ones with political influence and economic interests, so the Bureau operates primarily on their behalf.

Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to the slaughter of horses; however, ranchers who graze their livestock on public lands want the horses eliminated, and this manifests in a variety of legislative efforts that come up every year or so.

Wild horse advocates agree that population levels need to be kept under control. A scientifically proven, low-cost PZP birth control vaccine has been successfully used to humanely manage wild populations of horses; however, the Bureau continues to seek authority to manage by slaughter.

One of the Bureau’s claims is that the horses are starving. Thousands of hours of video filmed by wild horse advocacy organizations at regular intervals over many years show this to be false.

There are efforts in motion right now to include language in a budget bill that has already passed the House to allow slaughter of healthy horses and burros.

This language is expected to be taken up in the Senate any day as this newsletter goes to press. Congress has passed a continuing spending resolution extending last year’s budget for the final three months of this year. The slaughter language is in a new budget bill they plan to pass by the end of the year, to take effect in January.

It is easier to change budget language early in the process, so wild horse advocate organizations are asking concerned citizens to speak up now, by calling and writing their U.S. Senators with this simple message -- the 2018 Interior Department spending legislation must include prohibitions on the destruction of healthy wild horses and burros and their sale for slaughter.

Please make your voice heard, and if you would like learn more and receive regular updates on this issue, you can sign up for emails from the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.