Hello again!

We have one last blog to share with you today!

This one is a request for you to contact your members of Congress! We have made this easy for you!

Representatives Titus, Cohen and Schweikert are currently circulating a letter through Congress asking for their colleagues to sign onto a letter asking that pro-horse language be added to the FY 2025 Appropriations Bill. 

Heather and I have been encouraging all of you to reach out to your federal delegates and we are also looking for ways that we can be PROACTIVE in our advocacy efforts.  THIS is a GREAT way to start!

One way we can be proactive is to ask our legislators to sign a letter that Representative Titus drafted asking that pro-horse language be added to the 2025 Appropriations bill.  This is what Senator Hoeven did for the Theodore Roosevelt National Park wild horses in the FY 2024 budget. 

We have created an easy way for you to email your legislators and ask them to sign onto this letter.  We encourage everyone to write their own email to their legislators, but clicking on this link will also send this email to your Congressional delegates. 

You can either copy and paste this letter in an email to them or you can use our link to send your letter directly to all of your representatives.  We also included President Biden and Vice President Harris in the emails.

If you choose to use our form to send your email, you can do that by clicking here: https://secure.everyaction.com/kEiYtVCdq0Cgqz1ru-plJg2

The sign-on letter reads as follows (PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS!):

Dear Colleague,

We invite you to join our letter to Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pingree requesting Interior appropriations language for Fiscal Year 2025 that would promote the humane and fiscally responsible management of wild horses and burros.

In Fiscal Years 2022 to 2023, the Bureau of Land removed over 25,500 wild horses and burros from the wild and is on track to remove a staggering 20,000 more in fiscal year 2024, adding to the 64,000 wild horses in government holding facilities. The BLM spends roughly two-thirds of its annual budget for rounding up and holding wild horses. The roundup process, which often involves the use of helicopters, can be brutal on the animals themselves, resulting in injury and death. Moreover, as the National Academy of Sciences has noted, this cycle of mass removals only serves to accelerate population growth rates through compensatory reproduction. Meanwhile, the BLM has spent less than 1% of its Wild Horse and Burro Program budget on fertility control methods that could effectively and humanely manage herds on the range.

The BLM’s continued focus on mass removals as evidenced by the agency’s 2020 plan to Congress that called for accelerated removals at a cost of nearly a billion dollars in the first five years alone does not offer a sustainable path for wild horse and burro management in the United States. The BLM has also continued to pursue risky surgical sterilization procedures as a means of population control despite opposition from federal lawmakers, veterinarians, and the American public. Indeed, in its fiscal year 2025 budget justifications, the BLM calls for $15 million alone to be devoted to a permanent sterilization program.

There’s a better way: Rather than perpetuate a broken system of mass removals coupled with the costly long-term holding of our nation’s iconic wild horses, it is critical that Congress include language directing the BLM to implement humane and proven fertility control methods which have been used successfully for decades to manage herds but which to date the BLM has declined to employ widely. The BLM should also explore more cost-effective options that better fulfill the agency’s statutory mandate under the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act by keeping these federally protected animals out of holding facilities.

In FY24, we saw some progress as a result of appropriations directives on fertility control. The BLM continued to acknowledge that fertility control is a necessary part of the solution and is mandated to spend up to $11 million on fertility control methods. It is critical to ensure continued support for these efforts by raising the BLM’s spending on fertility control from 1% of their budget to 10%, and holding the program accountable should it fail to meet these goals.

To join the letter, please sign on via Quill. If you have any questions, please contact Dean Johnson in Congresswoman Titus’s office at dean.johnson3@mail.house.gov, Craig Dulniak in Congressman Cohen’s office at craig.dulniak@mail.house.gov, and/or Mason Maestas in Congressman Schweikert’s office at mason.maestas@mail.house.gov.

Representatives Titus & Cohen are amazing advocates for wild horses and burros! Did you see the letter they sent to BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning earlier this year? https://titus.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3558

We are grateful to these two representatives for speaking up for our wild horses and burros! We need to get some Congressional support for them! Thank you for taking the time to contact your federal legislators!

Thank you for your support and have a great day!

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