The debate for the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, budget for fiscal 2025 is well underway.
If you watched the Senate Hearing last month you can see that oil and gas, mining and green energy are main focus points in a politically charged election year.
Many are saying that the best we can hope for is that the “status quo” of the same budget language we have had the last six years makes it into the final bill. The language in the bill currently maintains prohibitions against outright killing any healthy wild horse or burro or sending them directly to slaughter. We can also expect to see the same $11 million rolled into the package again for “expanding reversible fertility control” that BLM has used to amp up things like use of the hormonal vaccine (GonCon), IUDs and the use of PZP (non hormonal vaccine).
As with this debate every single year, under every single administration or make-up of House and Senate, we are up against big money corporate lobby groups that have the ear of Congress.
We need you to make your voice heard if there is any chance to gain a single step for reform.
Congress simply saying BLM has to comply with a welfare policy (called “CAWP”) will not change anything. First, BLM never took the final steps necessary to create formal policy through rulemaking. Second, the way CAWP was finalized by BLM in 2021, it contains no consequences for violation.
Permanent sterilization through chemical and surgical procedures has been approved in numerous roundup plans. We must gain language that forbids federal funding for sterilization.
In light of our recent court win, BLM has still not issued any directive or designated funding specifically toward creating long overdue management plans. Removal and fertility control is not management.
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 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. All members of Congress can introduce amendments to any bill that comes out of committee.
Thank you for being an active advocate.
Thank you for helping to keep WHE working in field, breaking ground through litigation and educating the media and Congress during these dangerous times for all living beings on our public lands.
Categories: Wild Horse Education
You must be logged in to post a comment.