WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump’s controversial budget has come up with a solution to having too many wild horses roaming free in America: humane euthanasia and unrestricted sale, which could send the homeless animal to slaughterhouses in neighboring countries.
The budget request from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposes “$70.7 million for the Wild Horse and Burro program and eliminates appropriations language restricting BLM from using all of the management tools provided for in the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The BLM manages wild horse and burro herds on 26.9 million acres of public lands. Low public demand to adopt or purchase excess animals, a lack of effective reproduction-control tools, and high costs to care for unadopted or unsold animals have restricted the BLM’s ability to manage herd growth. As a result, the BLM estimates that nearly 73,000 wild horses and burros roam public lands as of March 2017, almost three times the number that is sustainable and healthy for the land and the animals. The President’s budget would help reverse the declining health of wild horse and burro herds and the public rangelands on which they—and many other species—depend, by allowing the BLM to use the full range of tools identified in the 1971 Act, including humane euthanasia and unrestricted sale of certain excess animals.”
According to the America Wild Horse Campaign, the Trump budget “includes a shocking request to Congress to lift the ban on slaughtering America’s iconic wild horses and burros. If approved, the new budget would result in the mass killing of tens of thousands of these federally-protected animals. The lives of the 46,000 captured wild horses and burros in holding facilities and the 46,000 wrongly considered to be ‘excess’ on the range are in immediate danger.”
Horses in the U.S. may end up in Canada or Mexico; there are few domestic horse slaughterhouses. According to horse fund.org, in Canada, “gunshot is the most common method to render slaughter horses unconscious in plants where the meat is for human consumption.” Mexico reportedly uses a variety of methods.
After an emergency spending bill was adopted earlier in May by Congress, the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society Legislative Fund announced they were “pleased that the 2017 omnibus spending bill includes provisions directing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to protect our nation’s wild horses and burros. The bill prevents the BLM and its contractors from sending wild horses to be slaughtered for human consumption. It further directs the BLM to review all serious proposals from non-governmental organizations and create a plan, within 180 days of enactment of the bill, to maintain long-term, sustainable populations on the range in a humane manner.”
The President’s budget, introduced May 23, offers possible cuts to the BLM – and many other programs in the budget – to reduce the country’s massive budget deficits.
