Keeping Wild Horses Wild

There is a major move by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to depopulate wild horses and burros from the public lands in the West, and it’s our goal to keep wild horses and burros in their federally-designated habitats and to manage their growth through the application of fertility control means that are safe and humane. Accepting without question the Bureau of Land Management’s false narrative about a “wild horse overpopulation crisis,” while at the same time ignoring the impacts of millions of commercial livestock, Congress has been giving tens of millions in new dollars to the agency, with most of the money allocated for more round-ups and removals and feeding and housing of the rounded-up animals, and only a small fraction allocated to fertility control.

BLM is on track to use dangerous and stressful helicopter roundups to remove as many as 30,000 horses and burros a year, in an attempt to depopulate the West of these iconic animals. We fought for more dollars for immunocontraception to slow roundups, keep horses on the range, and preserve the genetic health of animals in their habitats. We are building a coalition to advance those goals and we have crafted federal legislation to amend the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to achieve these goals.