Project 2025 would kill the wild horses

Both free-ranging horses and burros captured in the wild by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) were up for purchase and adoption in Marana on Saturday. I attended this event several years ago and was looking forward to it, but I ended up arriving late –no thanks to Google’s driving directions.

Two burros, shown at top of this post, which had been trained by prisoners at the Arizona Department of Corrections facility to work as pack animals and cart pullers, were standing by, ready to show that they were saddle trained, too. Nearby, several pens held shy, young burros huddling together.

Exhibition of trained horses and burros

Many of the horses had apparently already been sold, but two horses were still being shown by prisoners from Wild Horse Inmate Program in Florence. The man on the left was in charge of the activities in the ring and apparently a lead in the training program. The man on the right, riding a horse named Zorro, told the sparse crowd that he had never been on a horse in his life until he managed to get into this program at age 35. Both he and another prisoner spoke of what they had learned about themselves during this program.

At this point, the wind began to stir up the dust on the Marana Heritage show grounds. It became blinding. I couldn’t see 20 feet away from me. The gusts subsided, then came back again even more furiously. Being blasted by dust was awful, so I decided to leave at the same time the man in charge of this exhibition and sale called it to an end.

So far, all this, except for the dust, sounds quite good–right? At home, however, I did some research with the organization, Return to Freedom, that lead to the alarming realization that Trump’s Project 2025 plans even reached down into wild horses and burros in its attempt to remake a very different, less compassionate, America.

How Project 2025 would care for wild horses and other animals

These days, the BLM, which by law is mandated to care for the horses, burros and other animals on public lands, rounds up wild horses and keeps them in massive corralls, like this one in Ridgecrest, California. There are more horses than they, and some independent experts, think the land will carry, if the horses are left free to roam and to breed. (And the more homes for humans built in outlying areas, the less land is available for horses and other creatures.)

The BLM also has a sterilization program for horses still on open ranges. Outside experts declare that the sterilization program should be much more aggressive to contain the growth of bands of horses. Project 2025, however, advocates destroying them all: “Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.“ Go to the linked site to read the verbatim statement in Project 2025 and a lengthy rebuttal by the Return to Freedom non-profit. (Robert Redford is on the Board of Directors.)

Why would Project 2025 want to destroy horses

Why would they want to destroy them all? Do they believe that the costs of maintaining wild horses and burros are damaging the U.S. economy? Do they want to fire the BLM staff as unnecessary? Or do they want to clear off all public lands and sell these beautiful places to rich oligarchs, like Elon Musk and his friends in the tech world? For whatever it is worth, I worked for a man in an ad agency years ago who firmly advocated selling off all public lands — including National Parks. So what I am asking here is not just a crazy conspiracy theory. There are people, at least here in the West, who see no benefit in public lands, to be enjoyed by rich and poor alike. They want the lands to be privately owned — by themselves — without the responsibility of taking care of horses or any other unwelcome creatures which have roamed across the continent for centuries.

How to buy a horse or burro

If you are interested in buying one of the horses or burros through the BLM’s sales, please check this site for a listing of upcoming sales. At the sale I attended previously, there were parents and grandparents buying burros for children. I wonder if that will happen in the future.

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