Project 2025 would kill 75,000 wild horses

[NOTE:Just introduced in Congress: a new bill regarding killing horses. See details at bottom.]

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 it was fun. But I ended up arriving late –no thanks to Google’s screwy 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 demonstrate 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 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 for the day.

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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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 led to the alarming realization that Trump’s Project 2025 plans even reached down into the life and death of wild horses and burros in its attempt to remake a very different America.

How Project 2025 would (not) care for wild horses and other animals

These days, the BLM, by law, is mandated to care for the horses, burros and other animals on public lands. There are about 75,000 horses in total roaming wild and kept in massive corrals, 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.

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 on pages 560-561, 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.) To me this recommendation has echoes of the enormous slaughter of buffalo back in the 1870s.

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?

For whatever it is worth, I worked for a man years ago who firmly advocated selling off all public lands — including National Parks. So the questions I am asking here are not just some 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. They simply want to monetize the public lands and National Parks by privatizing them, then building hotels, condos, fast food places and gas/charging stations as they see fit. I cannot support this idea.

If you want to register your concerns about these horses and the threats to the National Parks, contact Doug Burgum, Secretary of Interior today.

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Update. This report was in FB on March 6. 2025.
“Today, the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act was reintroduced in Congress by U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Reps. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill).

The timely reintroduction of this important bill comes at a critical time as American Wild Horse Conservation gears up for a national day of action to celebrate National Horse Protection Day on March 1st, calling for a halt to helicopter roundups.

The SAFE Act would expand the Dog and Cat Meat Prohibition Act which was passed in 2018 as part of the Farm Bill to include equines. It would prohibit the commercial slaughter of horses, both domestic and wild, in the United States and would end their foreign export to slaughter.

Share your thoughts by calling your Member of Congress about this important bill. You can read more at the American Wild Horse website.”

My take: This bill failed to pass in previous Congresses so this is a reintroduction. Even if this bill passes, Congress could pass another bill authorizing the BLM to destroy the wild horses in conformance with Project 2025. The argument by some is that horses, which were introduced by escaping from Spanish soldiers back in the 1400s, are not a native species in the Americas and should thus be eradicated. Others who are supporting horses, value the historic role, for better or worse, that horses have played in the Americas. Still others simply love horses. And the truth is that even if the government destroyed them all within the U.S. border, there would still be millions of horses in Canada, Mexico and very other country down to Argentine and Chile.

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