06/15/2025
The co-chairs of the Congressional Wild Horse Caucus and Congressional Animal Protection Caucus this week urged House and Senate appropriators to protect healthy wild horses and burros from being killed or sold to slaughter by government agencies.
The president’s 2026 budget proposal omitted long-standing, bipartisan protective language.
Its absence in final funding bills would open the door to the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to euthanize (shoot, in all likelihood) captured wild horses and burros or sell them without protections against slaughter.
The bipartisan letter to the co-chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees’ Interior Subcommittees was signed by Congresswoman Dina Titus, Rep. Mike Quigley, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. David Schweikert, Congressman Vern Buchanan, Congressman Steve Cohen, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick and Representative Sharice Davids.
We are grateful to these and other members of Congress who have reached out to the Interior Appropriations Subcommittees, but wild horses advocates must not let up — we must ensure this critically important protective language is included in the final spending package!
Ways you can help:
✅ Send a message to your members of Congress demanding
🔹that no-kill language for wild horses and burros is included in spending bills: https://tinyurl.com/2yp2vwty
🔹that they support the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act to ban horse slaughter: https://tinyurl.com/mss54za9
✅ Call (202) 224-3121. Urge both of your U.S. senators and U.S. representative to:
🔹tell the Interior Appropriations Subcommittees to include language preventing the government from euthanizing healthy wild horses and burros or selling them without protections against slaughter;
🔹support the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act to ban horse slaughter (bill numbers are H.R. 1661 in the House, S. 775 in the Senate).
✅ Donate to our Wild Horse Defense Fund: https://tinyurl.com/k5wrweah
Photo by Meg Frederick Photography