President Biden's proposed FY 2023 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) budget, released Monday, March 28, 2022, includes $153.1 million for the wild horse and mustang program , $16.1 million more than the FY 2022 budget adopted earlier this month.
"Wild horse and mustang populations diminish the health of public wilderness areas and negatively impact land uses and species that depend on them," the BLM's budget section states. "The [BLM] looks forward to continued dialogue and support from Congress to achieve appropriate population management levels and a fiscally sustainable program. The budget proposal provides no details beyond these two sentences.
For Neda Demayo of Return to Freedom Horse Sanctuaries, "Congress must not allow the BLM to continue to aggressively remove wild horses and mules from their living space with a vague promise that the agency will implement fertility control once it reaches its own arbitrarily low population goals. The BLM has promised to use fertility control in the past and failed to do so, resulting in increased populations on the land and on out-of-territory operations, even as the agency decimated herd after herd.
Lawmakers must pressure the BLM to implement proven, safe and humane fertility control now - or the unsuccessful cycle of capturing and warehousing wild American horses and burros will not end. If we simply do more of the same, costs will skyrocket and wild horses, faced with new round-ups, will suffer even more."
Help the wild horse cause by signing the petition, and participating in Native horses events this August.
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