Originally published 2018-02-02.
Between 2016 and 2018, the US government came close to allowing the killing of tens of thousands of healthy wild horses. The figure that made headlines, 45,000, was the number of mustangs already rounded up and held in government corrals and pastures. A federal advisory board recommended euthanising the ones nobody would adopt, and the administration asked Congress for permission. Congress said no: in March 2018 it kept the long-standing ban on destroying healthy wild horses and burros.
The fight has not gone away. Wild horse numbers on the range keep rising, holding pens keep filling, and the costs to taxpayers keep climbing. Here is how the program works, why the proposal was made, what each side argues and where things stand now.
Who manages America's wild horses
Wild horses and burros on public land are protected by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which calls them living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West. The law makes it a crime to harass or kill them on federal land and puts the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service in charge of protecting and managing them.
Most herds live in ten western states, with the largest share in Nevada. The BLM sets an "appropriate management level" (AML) for each herd area, meaning the number of animals it believes the land can support alongside wildlife and livestock grazing. Nationally, the maximum AML is about 25,600 horses and burros.
The trouble is that wild horses have few natural predators, and herds can roughly double every four years. When numbers rise above the AML, the BLM rounds animals up, often using helicopters, and offers them for adoption or sale. Those that are not placed go into long-term holding, typically on leased private pastures in the Midwest where ranchers are paid a daily rate per horse.
How the 45,000 figure arose
By 2016, adoptions had fallen far behind removals. At a meeting in Elko, Nevada, on 9 September 2016, the BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board voted to recommend that the agency euthanise or sell without limitation the animals in holding that were judged unadoptable. At the time, 45,191 horses were in corrals and pastures, costing about $49 million a year to care for. Only one member, Ginger Kathrens of The Cloud Foundation, voted against.
The advisory board could only make recommendations, and the BLM said at the time that it would not kill healthy horses. But the administration's budget proposals for 2018 asked Congress to lift the restrictions that prevented the agency from euthanising healthy animals or selling them without guarantees against slaughter.
This is where much online coverage went wrong. Many headlines claimed the government planned to kill 75 percent of America's wild horses. In fact, the 45,000 were the captive horses in holding. The 75 percent figure referred to something else: the reduction the BLM wanted on the range to bring roughly 75,000 free-roaming animals down toward its target levels, as wild horse advocate Jim Schnepel explained to ABC News in January 2018. Mixing the two numbers made the plan sound like an imminent mass cull of horses in the wild.
What advocates argued
Wild horse groups reacted with alarm. Simone Netherlands, a spokesperson for the American Wild Horse Campaign, told ABC News that the agency meant to protect the horses was "asking Congress for permission to kill them."
Advocates made several points that still shape the debate:
- The BLM, they said, created the holding crisis by removing horses faster than it could find homes for them.
- Fertility control was badly underfunded. In 2016 the BLM spent about $340,000 on contraception and around $52.5 million on capturing and holding horses, according to Return to Freedom.
- Livestock vastly outnumber horses on public rangelands, so critics argue horses are blamed for damage largely caused by cattle and sheep grazing under subsidised permits.
- Selling horses "without limitation" could send them to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada, which most Americans oppose.
What the BLM argued
The agency's case is about land and water. Lisa Reid, a BLM spokesperson, told ABC News that horses need food, water and space, and that not every acre of the vast western range produces enough forage. By the agency's count, she said, most herd management areas were overpopulated, sometimes by 300 percent, which risks starvation, disease and damage to habitat shared with other species such as sage grouse and pronghorn.
Officials also pointed out that the agency must balance competing demands from ranchers, conservationists, hunters, energy companies and horse advocates. Seen from inside the BLM, the choice was between unpopular options: leave too many horses on degraded land, pay ever more to keep them in pens, or find ways to reduce the numbers permanently.
Ecologists outside the debate generally agree that wild horse populations need some form of management. Where they disagree with each other is how: through removals, fertility control, more adoptions, or larger herd areas with fewer cattle.
What Congress decided
Congress has repeatedly stepped in. From 1988 to 2004 it barred the BLM from using its budget to destroy healthy excess animals. A 2004 amendment then required sales of older and repeatedly unadopted horses, and annual spending bills since 2005 have included language blocking funds for horse slaughter.
When the euthanasia proposal reached Capitol Hill, it failed. The omnibus spending bill released in March 2018 kept the bipartisan language prohibiting the BLM from killing healthy wild horses and burros, and it again effectively banned horse slaughter for the year. Return to Freedom and other groups welcomed the decision. The same protections have continued in later spending laws, though they must be renewed each year.
The situation today
The underlying problem remains unsolved. According to the BLM's latest figures, about 85,500 wild horses and burros lived on public lands as of March 2026, more than three times the maximum management level. Around 58,000 more were in off-range corrals and pastures in mid-2026, and off-range holding cost roughly $101 million in fiscal 2024, about two-thirds of the program's spending.
The BLM placed about 8,000 animals into private care in fiscal 2025 through adoptions, sales and transfers, and it treated 921 mares with fertility-control vaccines such as PZP and GonaCon. Advocates say that is still far too little contraception to slow herd growth, while the agency says vaccines are hard to deliver to wild, wide-ranging herds.
If you want to help, the most direct option is adopting or buying a wild horse or burro through the BLM's program, which requires suitable facilities and experience with untrained animals. Supporting sanctuaries, volunteering with fertility-control darting programs and contacting your representatives about the annual spending language are other ways to make a difference.
Sources: Wikipedia: Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971; Bureau of Land Management: Wild Horse and Burro Program Data; Return to Freedom, September 2016: Advisory board recommends euthanasia for captive wild horses; Return to Freedom, 22 March 2018: RTF applauds wild horse protections in omnibus. Interviews with Simone Netherlands and Lisa Reid from ABC News; story first shared via The Mind Unleashed.
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