16. Department of the Interior · Notable · Needs Congress
Authorize BLM to humanely dispose of surplus wild horses and burros
Printed page 529 16. Department of the Interior
“Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”
What has happened
- Not started
No bill authorizing BLM to dispose of surplus wild horses and burros has been introduced, let alone passed. A search of all 18,433 bills in the congress.gov corpus returns three matches for wild horses or burros and none of them grants disposal authority: H.R. 4356, the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 2025 (referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources on 2025-07-10), would restrict the use of helicopters in gathers; S. 1377 protects the Theodore Roosevelt National Park herd. The annual appropriations rider barring the destruction of healthy animals remains, and BLM's FY2027 justification requests $106.8 million for the wild horse and burro program on the existing adoption-and-holding model.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
A Requires-Congress ask. The 119th Congress has moved in the opposite direction.
- Action
- other
- Object
- Statutory authority for BLM to dispose of wild horses and burros
- ID
- 1482