Today, through their social media, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced they revised its Bill of Sale for Wild Horses and Burros (Form 4710-023, June 2026), and the agency is telling people the change is meant to make it easier to prosecute buyers who send federally protected wild horses and burros to slaughter (BLM Form 4710-023).

We have read the new form word for word against the old one. Here is the truth: BLM changed a few words. It did not change the program. And a few words on a contract the agency has no capacity to enforce is not accountability — it is public relations.

That is why Wild Horse Education stands with Rewilding America Now and its coalition partners in calling on Congress to authorize a full, independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Sales Authority Program.

You can stand with them too. Sign on HERE

What Actually Changed

One clause. The transfer-to-slaughter restriction went from prohibiting a buyer who “knowingly” resells to slaughter to one who does so “knowingly, recklessly, or negligently” (old form; new form). That lowers the bar for a violation. Everything else — the 18 U.S.C. § 1001 penalties, the humane-care language, the “voidable at the discretion of the BLM” clause, and the language that animals are “no longer considered wild free-roaming” and final upon pick-up — is unchanged.

Three words, and nothing else.

BLM still claims the agency has “no legal authority to track or direct the disposition of wild horses or burros once they pass into private ownership.”

So the agency has rewritten the penalty language on a contract while simultaneously telling the public it cannot follow the animals long enough to know whether that penalty language is ever broken.

Authorize a real tracking-and-compliance provision in the Bill of Sale itself. If BLM’s excuse is that it lacks the authority to follow an animal after sale, then the Bill of Sale — the exact document BLM just chose to revise — is where that authority can be written in.

BLM had the form open. It changed three words about prosecution and left out the one thing that would let it actually verify compliance.

Why the Audit Matters

A GAO audit would examine whether the Sales Authority Program is undermining the congressional directives that prohibit slaughter, failing to enforce its own safeguards, and misrepresenting the fate of these animals to Congress and the public.

None of those questions are answered by editing a contract.

If anything, BLM’s decision to toughen the language is a quiet admission that the old safeguards were not working — which is the very reason independent eyes are needed.

If GAO confirms that federally protected animals are still moving into the slaughter pipeline after two decades of annual funding prohibitions, that is the clearest possible proof that the underlying “sale without limitation” authority — not just how BLM runs it — is the problem.

A reworded contract does not track a single horse. It does not reclaim a single burro from a kill pen. It does not build an oversight team or a recovery task force, and it does not close the loophole that lets a $25 animal be flipped into the slaughter pipeline once title passes. Only enforcement, structural change, and honest oversight can do that — and the first step toward all three is letting Congress see the whole picture.

We call on Congress to authorize a full GAO audit of the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Sales Authority Program — and, in the meantime, to direct BLM to delay title transfer on sales or build genuine tracking and compliance into the Bill of Sale. The words on the form should mean something. Right now, they don’t.

You can stand with a coalition of advocates calling for an audit. Sign on HERE

We need your support to keep our teams engaging lawmakers, our team fighting in the court, our team ready to run the roundup schedule.

Every mile we travel to cover roundups or assess a herd, every court case we bring, every win, every action we take is only possible because of your support.