Taking time to engage your lawmakers is important in any year. It can be even more important in an election year. In an election year many issues get lost in the chaos. Issues of such as protecting wild horses and burros will often get stone-walled under the influence of powerful lobby groups. 

In recent years we have seen precious little changes in the budget for wild horses and burros that could lead to reform. At the same time we have seen “word craft” used to soften the language of a continuation of the scientifically and fiscally unsound program to make it sound like there are changes that simply do not exist in practice. 

This article turned out longer than intended. We hope you read it. Or, you can simply scroll down to the red text for an action item.

The debates surrounding protecting both wild and domestic horses and burros are littered with absurdities. Try to be as pleasant as you can when faced with the bizarre contradictions. 

As an example, earlier this week we talked about the SAFE Act that would stop transport to slaughter and construction of horse slaughter plants in the U.S. The opposition to that bill includes statements that somehow passing SAFE creates a hardship for “farmers that cannot afford to keep animals that are no longer useful.” SAFE does not stop someone from selling or euthanizing a horse, it just stops them from selling them for slaughter.

Then, on the same day, we were having a chat about protection of wild horses and burros and the need for rulemaking to create an enforceable welfare policy. Apparently this particular Congressperson felt changing anything to protect wild horses was out of line because “farmers are having to turn massive amounts of horses out onto public lands, and the populations are much higher than BLM estimates, because selling a horse to slaughter is illegal.” 

In the debate to gain the SAFE Act it is recognized that sale to slaughter happens routinely. Yet somehow the debate to address issues like a welfare policy for wild horses and burros cannot happen because no one can sell a horse to slaughter? If you state such a simple absurdity in the argument you are likely to risk some type of personal attack that minimizes your intelligence or character. 

This is the reality you need to face every single day as an equine advocate. 

It gets even worse when you deal with the Appropriations Bill. There is still massive confusion in the public about how this bill works and what it can and cannot do. Congress cannot make site or issue-specific planning decisions in the Appropriations debate. The “fund” or “defund” a program, and the language used to fund something, can specifically direct how that funding is used. This can directly impact site-specific decision-making without Congress crafting an actual management decision.

The spending debate surrounding the BLM Wild Horse and Burro program has been driven by powerful lobby groups into one single debate: population growth suppression. “Helicopter VS Fertility Control” has become a conversation fraught with misinformation and contradicting absurdities. Fertility control does not mean a dart gun. A dart gun does not mean the one-year formula of PZP. Asking simply for “fertility control” has led to darting of long-lasting and powerful hormones (yes, GonaCon is darted) and an increase in “maintenance” helicopter roundups to apply fertility control. It has also led to surgical and other sterilization methods being approved in numerous Gather-Environmental Assessments (EA) across the West as well as the Presidential budget request including funding for sterilization in 2025. So, 7 years of “increase spending for fertility control” (as outlined in the Path Forward), without being extremely specific and careful with language, led us where we are now. BLM only does fertility control when they are at or near their coveted Appropriate Management Level (AML), which does not help to “halt helicopter roundups” or help to keep horses wild, just the opposite.

None of this addresses ongoing issues involving abuse or failures to actually manage wild horses and burros and
habitats. No matter what you are told or how the words are massaged, nothing being done funds reforms to stop abuse or change management. All that is happening is a rush to an unscientific AML and a switch in population growth suppression that is leaving herd-after-herd in tatters.

How can we make an impact that turns the path backwards into actual reform moving forward?

We need to get funding designated to directly address abuse, management and loopholes to slaughter closed. What this means is that Congress needs to fund processes that open doors or defund processes to close them.

• Designated funding for formal rulemaking for an enforceable welfare policy. BLM’s internal standards are simply not an enforceable policy and are failing to provide mandated protections from abuse.
• Designate funding to clear the backlog of Herd Management Area Plans (HMAP) to address site-specific management goals and objectives and define the site-specific actions to meet them.
• Defund the Adoption Incentive and Sale Programs. BLM should only be funding the standard adoption program and get rid of gimmicks that have no safeguard to comply with the law to protect horses and burros from slaughter.
• No funding should be used for sterilization of wild horses or burros. BLM has not, in any way shape or form, demonstrated through scientific methods that this extreme action is even something that requires contemplation.

Click here to send the above message to your reps in the House and Senate. All members of Congress can provide input to the Appropriations committees right now to influence drafting of the spending bills for 2025.

If you want to see the longer list of items we are working toward, you can click HERE. 

These 3 things would open up long overdue reform. Imagine a real humane handling policy open to public comment and finalized to create enforceability? Think about BLM disclosing how AML and forage allocations are determined and having a chance to speak for the wild ones you cherish? Water improvements, genetic preservation, critical migratory paths with no fences, integration of species through rewilding or proposing fire fuel reduction through AML changes? If BLM wants to do fertility control in an area making them define what kind is best and when and how it would be applied so it does not jeopardize a herd? No more gimmicks that leave captives open to a fast slide to slaughter? The 3 simple things listed above would achieve that end.

None of the 3 things listed above require any change in law. In fact, all they do is hold BLM accountable to existing parameters of law. Thats why WHE also carries litigation active in the courts to address the same. However, just as the “Path Forward” utilized Congress to accelerate what they wanted through Appropriations, you can use the same relentlessness they do and call repeatedly.

Breaking through the controlling and powerful big corporate lobby groups is not going to be easy. However, you can really help by being careful what you sign onto, being careful how you pick your works and by being active. If you have time? Do the “click and send” and then call your representatives or write them “snail mail.” Keep asking and asking. That is what lobby groups do. They do not just ask once… but again and again.

We hope this article explains the circumstances and the need for an alternative type of action.

If you agree? Please click HERE.

Our teams are out in the field and working hard on the backside doing outreach and briefing active litigation. 

We need your help to continue to document, expose, work toward reform with lawmakers and litigate. Our wild ones deserve to live free on the range and free from abuse.