Last month, Congress approved a 4% cut to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Wild Horse and Burro Program.
The Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) funding package approved by Congress includes:
- $141,972,000 to operate the Wild Horse and Burro Program;
- A continued prohibition against the BLM and U.S. Forest Service destroying healthy wild horses or burros or their sale to slaughter; and
- Wording which keeps in place a ban on horse slaughter in the United States (which means a total ban at the federal level is still needed to stop horses from shipping to slaughter outside of the U.S.).
Over 64,000 wild horses and burros are kept in overcrowded government pens or on leased pastures at a cost of over $109 million each year.
In spite of on-the-range management strategies, proven to be successful, the BLM intends to remove over 11,100 wild horses and burros from the range between now and September.
The number of horses to be provided with fertility control is just over 200 at this time.; even though multiple herds have been successfully managed for years and able to remain free on taxpayer funded public lands allocated to them by law with its use.