Today is the first day of the new fiscal year for the government. A temporary bill will fund programs until December.

There is still time to impact the final fiscal year 2027 debate. The spending bill is the only “must pass bill” between now and the end of the year, an election year, when bills not passed will need to be reintroduced or forgotten in the next session.

For the government the year 2026 ended and 2027 has begun.

As we turn toward Fiscal Year 2027, we resolve not to let urgency become amnesia.

Together, we resolve to protect wild horses and burros not just in words, but through action—through public records, comments, investigations, advocacy, congressional pressure, and, when necessary, the difficult road to court.

Stone Cabin

In FY 2027, together we resolve:

• To question management claims that are not supported by open data, sound science, and a transparent public process. Population numbers, Appropriate Management Levels, removal targets, and treatment plans must withstand scrutiny.
• To defend the public lands that wild horses and burros need in order to remain wild.
• To challenge a federal program that too often shortchanges wild horses and burros while their legally designated habitat is reduced, fragmented, or treated as available for private exploitation.
• To remember that the promise made to wild horses and burros was not a promise of confinement, warehousing, or gradual disappearance. It was a promise to protect them as living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, on the lands where they belong.
• To fight for long-overdue, enforceable welfare rules for wild horses and burros. Humane treatment cannot be a public-relations phrase. It must be a binding standard from the range, through the gather, transport, holding, veterinary care, adoption, sale, and every stage in between.
• To demand meaningful guardrails on every proposal labeled “fertility control.” We will not allow vague language to conceal permanent sterilization, invasive experimentation, gelding, sex-ratio manipulation, or unproven interventions.
• To insist that any reproductive-management policy be transparent, scientifically accountable, humane, and subject to informed public oversight—not quietly expanded through appropriations language, agency discretion and backdoor agreements that cut out the public.
• To recognize that once a harmful decision is final, the path to stopping it may lead to court. Litigation is difficult. It takes time, resources, preparation, records, legal expertise, and courage. But together, we resolve not to be intimidated by that reality when the law, the land, and the animals require us to stand firm.
• To support the advocates willing to do that work: the people who attend gathers, document conditions, read thousands of pages of records, submit comments, contact lawmakers, educate the public, and help build the resources needed to challenge unlawful or harmful actions in court. Those willing to put in that work need community of support.
• To refuse despair. We will not accept that removals, shrinking habitat, weak welfare protections, or permanent reproductive interventions are inevitable simply because they are proposed by an agency.

Callaghan Complex

The Hard Road

Some fights are apparent to the eye. A helicopter gather. A frightened family separated. A horse or burro injured in holding. A range diminished while private interests profit.

Other fights happen in dense agency documents, appropriations language, public-comment deadlines, administrative records, and decisions made far from the public eye.

And when a harmful plan is approved, the only path left may be court.

That road is not easy. It takes time. It takes records, legal work, persistence, courage, and financial resources. It asks advocates to keep going when the odds look long and the system tells them to accept the outcome and that their loss really does not matter.

But together, we resolve to be courageous enough to take the hard road when it is the only road left.

Not because we seek conflict.

Because wild horses and burros cannot file a public-records request. They cannot submit comments to Congress. They cannot challenge an unlawful decision in federal court. They cannot explain why a public range matters, why a family band matters, or why “management” must never become a euphemism for pain, suffering and disappearance.

Our shared promise

Wild Horse Education can investigate, inform, document, challenge, and speak in court and to lawmakers.

You can help turn that work into a movement: by staying informed, sharing the facts, contacting decision-makers, supporting advocacy and legal action, and refusing to let these animals be forgotten.

Together, we resolve to be courageous enough to take the hard road.

There is still time to impact the 2027 budget.

WHE is working hard to turn the narrative away from the manufactured “overpopulation” narrative carried by big corporate interests and back to reform of a system that built reality where wild horses and burros get the least amount of public resources to keep private profiteers happy. Protecting herd and habitat, a fair and balanced piece of public lands for wild horses and burros, was never the goal in practice. And all of this was never done with the welfare of wild horses and burros in mind. After 55 years of the law we are still fighting for enforceable welfare rules and wild horses and burros are hitting the slaughter pipeline in record numbers.

There is (yet another) urgent matter that needs you to take action: Another infusion of cash into the program with no safety net.

Take Action Today

Please ask your Senators and Representative to put guardrails on the $30. million coming from USDA into the BLM program into FY 2027 appropriations:

1. Prohibit federal funding for experimentation, chemical sterilization, surgical sterilization, and other permanent sterilization procedures affecting wild horses and burros on—or captured from—BLM lands.

2. Fund a transparent rulemaking process to create science-based, enforceable welfare standards for the entire Wild Horse and Burro Program.wildhorseeducation

TAKE THE QUICK ACTION NOW

WHE and you—together for freedom, mercy, justice, and the right of wild horses and burros to remain wild and free.

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. Only a few hours left on this batch. 

Click image or click here to order a two-sided shirt and support our work.

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.