After outcry, federal spending bill spares wild horses, burros

Among the winners in a $1.3 trillion spending bill agreed to by congressional leaders on Thursday: wild horses.

Negotiators said nay to a House proposal to allow the culling of tens of thousands of horses and burros that roam the West or are held in government-funded corrals and ranches. Proponents of the idea, including its author, Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, described “human euthanization” as a last-ditch tool for controlling an escalating equine population that is degrading public lands and causing horses to starve.

But the proposal was vigorously opposed by wild horse advocacy groups, who have long resisted efforts to impose limits on the federally protected animals that have become symbols of the American West. They accuse the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the wild horse and burro populations, of bowing to demands from cattle ranchers who view equine herds as competitors on grazing lands.

“We are thrilled that Congress has rejected this sick horse slaughter plan,” Marilyn Kroplick, president of the animal rights group In Defense of Animals, said in a statement that claimed horse lovers had “jammed congressional phone lines with calls and sent tens of thousands of emails” to make their case.

The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act gave the animals federal protections, and it also permitted the interior secretary to sell or euthanize older and unadoptable animals. But for much of the past three decades, Congress has used annual appropriations bill riders to prohibit the killing of healthy animals or “sale that results in their destruction for processing into commercial products.”