Urge Lawmakers to Support Responsible Wild Horse Management
Dear John,
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, along with Reps. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Dina Titus (D-NV), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), recently introduced H.R. 9154, the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Protection Act of 2022--comprehensive legislation to promote the humane management of America's wild herds and protect them from harm and abuse.
If passed, this legislation would represent the most significant update to federal law governing wild equine management in more than 50 years. For decades, the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service have grossly mismanaged herds on public lands, regularly subjecting them to traumatic helicopter roundups and shifting once free-roaming horses and burros into holding facilities in an effort to clear them from the landscape. In January, the BLM announced it planned to remove a staggering 19,000 horses from the range in 2022. Injuries and fatalities regularly occur during roundups, and massive disease outbreaks have occurred in crowded holding facilities in the last few months. Additionally, as a 2021 New York Times investigation detailed, wild horses continue being sent to slaughter.
H.R. 9154 would right the federal government's failed course when it comes to wild horse and burro management. Among other beneficial provisions, this bipartisan bill would promote the use of proven and safe fertility control methods to keep herds in their natural habitats, prohibit lethal control and gruesome surgical sterilizations as management tools, protect wild horses and burros from being sold directly to slaughter, and eliminate cash incentives that have led to adopted horses being funneled into the slaughter pipeline.