Team,

We need your help today to ask the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies to protect wild horses and burros!

Right now, Representatives Dina Titus (D-NV), Steve Cohen (D-TN), and David Schweikert (R-AZ) are circulating a sign-on letter to urging the Appropriations Committee to support pro-wild horse language in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 appropriations legislation.

For the last two fiscal years, Congress has allocated up to $11 million in funding to implement fertility control initiatives in wild herds managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). But the BLM continues to ignore this congressional directive, instead relying on its cruel and costly roundup and stockpile system to remove thousands of wild equines from their homes and warehouse them in taxpayer-funded holding facilities.

In 2024 alone, the BLM plans to round up over 20,000 wild horses and burros, adding them to the 64,000 already languishing in overburdened holding facilities.

But thankfully, Reps. Titus, Cohen, and Schweikert are taking a stand. They have introduced language that would hold the BLM accountable for the implementation of robust, in-the-wild conservation through the use of fertility control, ultimately reducing helicopter roundups.

This language will require the BLM to:

Allocate no less than 10% of the agency’s budget for the implementation of humane fertility control programs in at least five additional Herd Management Areas (HMAs)

If the BLM fails to do this 120 days after the passage of this bill, it will incur a $100,000 fine per day until it implements acceptable fertility control programs

Study humane alternatives to the use of helicopters and manned fixed-wing aircraft

Stop cash incentive payments for adoptions.

Continue to prohibit the sale or adoption of healthy wild horses and burros that result in their destruction.

And more!

But team, we need your help right now. Last year your representative supported pro-wild horse language in the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bill. Now we need them to do the same this year. Please ask your U.S. representative to sign on to the Titus/Cohen/Schweikert letter in support of pro-wild horse language in the FY 2025 Interior appropriations bill.

- Team AWHC