Many of you have read the announcement from the secretive working group of the “Path Forward” partners, the Department of Interior (DOI) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) committing $30 million from the USDA budget to “fertility control.” 

Due to the vague and misleading language in the release (that links to no formal document) it is understandable that we are being flooded with questions.

There are many question we cannot answer. We are not part of any “National Wild Horse and Burro Roundtable” or list of preferred partners with BLM. We were not included in these discussion and neither were you. It was assumed you supported this do to the litany of petitions many signed asking for vague “increased fertility control.”

The questions we cannot answer: – Is this a budget line item in the USDA Appropriations Bill? –  Does this funding apply to both BLM and USFS wild horses and burros? – How is the money being transferred or allocated?

We can answer other questions. 

No, this money will not be used to validate “Appropriate Management Levels” (AML) in management planning. 

Correct, fertility control does not mean “one thing.”

Click here to learn about urgent and critical guardrails we need now and how you can help get them.

What is coming? Herds driven to unjustified low numbers that cannot naturally reproduce and recover. (more about AML, click image)

Let us state our position clearly first to avoid a lot of the social media nonsense: Wild Horse Education opposes expansion or use of fertility control in any form until the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro program is reformed from the ground up. The problem is not, and has never been, which reproductive intervention is selected because an asserted “overpopulation” is the core issue of the failing program. The problem is a management system built around unsupported and/or undisclosed population target methods/data, fragmented herd boundaries, a severe lack of data, a severe lack of “horse protective” management planning, no enforceable animal-welfare rules, etc. Fertility control is not reform. It is simply a way to get to unsupported numbers and keep populations low (more than half of herds will reach numbers lower than the minimum genetic viability threshold).

Wild horses and burros are a public lands component. This is not a domestic or farm animal conversation.

For educational purposes

What is fertility control? 

A reference to “fertility control” tells the public almost nothing until the agency identifies the product or procedure, the dose and protocol, the route of delivery, expected duration, reversibility, potential behavioral and physiological effects, and monitoring plan.

The National Academy of Sciences (National Research Council) has long recognized that fertility control ranges from reversible contraception to permanent sterilization, and that any method must be evaluated for efficacy, duration, reversibility, delivery, physiological effects, behavior, and social structure—not merely whether it prevents a foal from being born.

Many people think fertility control just means “PZP with a dart gun.” It does not. 

Even saying PZP is not talking about one thing. PZP is not one product

Native liquid PZP: Native liquid PZP is commonly associated with an initial primer-and-booster protocol and later boosters. This is the type most often associated with a dart gun but it can be applied with differing delivery systems.

PZP-22: PZP-22 is a controlled-release formulation with a liquid PZP component and timed-release pellets. admisnitered in one dose. The National Research Council described the pellets as releasing PZP at roughly 1, 3, and 12 months; the formulation is commonly referred to as PZP-22 because it was reported to remain about 85 percent effective after 22 months in one study. Pellet placement is normally a hand-injection issue.

SpayVac: SpayVac is a separate, liposome-encapsulated PZP formulation designed to extend the immune response after one injection. It is not native liquid PZP and it is not PZP-22. In the horse study summarized by the National Research Council, 12 captive mares received one hand injection and recorded contraceptive efficacy was 100 percent in year one and 83 percent in years two through four. SpayVac was part of the initial search for something longer acting before BLM settled on prioritizing the 2-dose regime of GonaCon (4-10 year efficacy in domestic mares).

Video above: Captive mares receiving the pelleted PZP-22 single does vaccine at Surprise before they switched to GonaCon. 

Jackson Mountains is new the warning

The current Jackson Mountains fight demonstrates the danger of treating “fertility control” as a harmless shorthand.

BLM’s approved Herd Management Area Plan does not describe only a temporary PZP program under “fertility control.”

The approved plans open the door to sterilization of both mares and stallions totaling one-third of a low population target, alongside other reproductive-management tools.

The plan concerns a 283,775-acre HMA with a low AML of 130 horses that live in two distinct populations north and south of the mountains. (Please remember low AML is the target goal, high AML is the maximum number allowed.)

WHE has taken the first step in legal action against BLM’s August 6, 2026 HMAP decision and sought a stay on August 24. During the September 2026 removal operation, BLM represented through counsel that sterilization and fertility-control treatment would not occur in that operation; the authorization remains in the broader plan.  (Our litigation is still active and broadening.)

That distinction is essential. A temporary pause in use during one roundup does not cure a plan that authorizes permanent and experimental interventions for a herd already managed at a number is below genetic viability. 

At Jackson Mountains, vague language does real work: it transforms proposals that may include sterilization, oviduct procedures, scarring, burning, or other interventions into the softer public phrase “fertility control.”

Additional funding without a single guardrail will create more experimentation and more “Jackson Mountains.” 

We think this actually will answer most of your questions: 

The $30 million message

On September 21, 2026, BLM announced a $30 million U.S. Department of Agriculture investment to “expand and accelerate fertility control efforts nationwide.”

The announcement frames expanded treatment as a way to stabilize herd growth after gathers reduce herds to “sustainable levels,”… It also invokes claims that most herds grow 15–20 percent annually and that overpopulation threatens range conditions. It accepts AML just like Path Forward does and is just one more stage of that plan to “get to current AML and stay there.”

Nothing in the announcement supplies enforceable guardrails defining which procedures are eligible, what welfare standards apply, how methods must be monitored, or what genetic-viability threshold must be met before (vague) reproductive suppression is funded.

AML is the unresolved foundation

BLM describes Appropriate Management Level, or AML, as the number of wild horses or burros the agency says can be sustained on the range. But the core questions remain unresolved: How was the number established? What forage allocation supports it? How are livestock, wildlife, water, mining, habitat fragmentation, and actual horse use accounted for? What data shows that a population held at that number is genetically viable? Where is the transparent public data and document?

Our 2025 review argues that many AMLs originated as interim, negotiated figures rather than data-based determinations; that BLM has failed for decades to disclose a science-based equation for forage allocation or an adequate basis for AML; and that only three HMAs nationwide have an AML above 500, while only 31 have an AML above 150.

“Humane” requires enforceable rules

The rhetoric surrounding fertility control often presents it as inherently humane. No intervention should receive that label by default. Humane treatment is not a press release, a program title, an appropriation, or a claim that the alternative would be worse. It requires enforceable, measurable rules and meaningful consequences when those rules are violated.

Reform before reproductive suppression

Education is necessary because vague language has been used to manufacture consent for actions that range from temporary contraception to permanent sterilization. If you read the press release? This is exactly what you, the public, say you want. Do you?

Understanding the menu is not an endorsement of ordering from it.

Until the program itself is reformed, expanding fertility control risks strengthening the same framework that created today’s crisis: reduce populations to historically unsupported AMLs, maintain fragmented herds below viable numbers, disregard cumulative land-use impacts (with zero mitigation to loss of habitat to mining and livestock), call the result “sustainable,” and label the process “humane” without enforceable welfare rules.

The public deserves more than a slogan.

“Humane” is not a word that can be claimed without rules.

And “overpopulation” is not a substitute for an honest accounting of how federal management, livestock allocation, industrial development, water loss, artificial boundaries, drought, climate change and unsupported AMLs have shaped the crisis that actually does exist. 

Click here to learn about urgent and critical guardrails we need now and how you can help get them.

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. Sincere Gratitude. 

Limited Edition Shirt to help support our work. 

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Help Defend Against The Broken Promise

Fifty-five years after Congress declared wild free-roaming horses and burros “fast disappearing from the American scene,” federal agencies are still driving their numbers down on the public lands meant to protect them.

Relentless removals are aimed at herd targets roughly one-third below the numbers found when Congress acted in 1971.

And the failures do not end there. After more than five decades, wild horses and burros still lack enforceable federal welfare standards that protect them through capture, confinement, transport, and disposition. Agencies continue to remove them without ensuring they are safeguarded from the slaughter pipeline.

This 55th-anniversary shirt honors the work of Velma Bronn Johnston—Wild Horse Annie—and refuses to let the cause she ignited be erased. We are carrying the fight forward for freedom, mercy, justice, and the right of wild horses and burros to remain wild and free on their public lands.

All proceeds fuel continued advocacy.