President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request proposes addressing the skyrocketing costs of wild horse and burro management by striking a provision designed to protect them.
The Bureau of Land Management budget request, details of which were released by the White House late Friday, would dramatically cut funding for the wild horse and burro program — and remove previous safeguards mandated by Congress that forbid the bureau from selling or transferring any of the federally protected animals to places where they could be slaughtered.
Overall, it would slash the program’s budget by 25 percent — to $106 million from $143 million — raising questions about what the bureau plans to do with the more than 64,000 animals it has removed from federal rangelands over the past few years and is caring for in off-range corrals and pastures.
The proposed cut to the wild horse and burro program comes as the White House has proposed slashing BLM’s overall budget by more than $500 million as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to cut costs and reshape the federal workforce. Caring for the captured wild horses and burros cost BLM more than $100 million a year, or roughly two-thirds of the program’s annual budget, and the bureau said in March they expect that trend to continue this year.
