24/08/2026

In December 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (Public Law 92-195), declaring wild horses and burros "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West" and placing them under the protection of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the United States Forest Service. It was the result of decades of public pressure: as far back as the 1950s, Nevada activist Velma Johnston — known to history as "Wild Horse Annie" — had mobilised thousands of children to write to Congress against the mechanised hunting of Mustangs. The 1971 law seemed to close that dark chapter. It seemed.

More than fifty years later, that protection has been dismantled piece by piece. And what had been happening in the shadows became public knowledge thanks to an investigation by the New York Times published on 20 August.

Hundreds of federally protected horses sent to slaughter

The Times reported that several hundred American Mustangs had been sold for slaughter, in a betrayal of public trust, congressional direction, and the historic legislation that had guaranteed their protection.

The reported facts are as follows: in 2025, approximately 3,700 wild horses were captured and sold — more than double the number in previous years. An Ohio livestock trader named Brandon Jones reportedly acquired around 500 Mustangs from the BLM — paying $25 each — and sold many of them for slaughter through clandestine contacts and channels.

According to livestock inspection records, the Mustangs sold by the government were sent to slaughterhouses in Canada. Suzanne Roy, a Mustang protection advocate who worked on the investigation as a consultant for Skydog Ranch & Sanctuary, confirmed to the Cowboy State Daily that the horses came from Wyoming: "We have the brand numbers for those horses."

The BLM rejected the allegations, stating that the Bureau "does not sell or send wild horses or burros to slaughter" and that reports of violations are taken seriously and referred to law enforcement. But Skydog Ranch founder Clare Staples sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum demanding an immediate suspension of all wild horse sales.

The ban that was — and then was not

To understand how we got here, it is necessary to reconstruct the regulatory history — a history of protections won and then eroded.

The 1971 law authorises federal agencies to destroy old, sick or lame animals by the most humane means available, and to allow private adoption of healthy animals. When suitable placements are unavailable, the agencies may sell them to dealers. Current law prohibits the BLM from using appropriated funds to slaughter healthy, unadopted animals, or to sell wild horses in a manner that results in their slaughter.

In 2004, however, Congress passed the so-called "Burns Amendment" — a provision buried in an omnibus spending bill that repealed for the first time the thirty-year ban on the commercial sale and slaughter of wild horses. It was the first time in more than a generation that the Mustang — the very symbol of the American West — could be slaughtered for meat. The reaction was immediate and cross-partisan: in 2007 the House attempted to restore the ban. The standoff between the two chambers of Congress continued for years, with protection reintroduced through annual appropriations riders — spending clauses attached each year to budget legislation — rather than by permanent law. A protection that must be renewed year after year is, by definition, fragile.

The Trump administration's plan

The federal budget for fiscal year 2026, submitted by the Trump administration on 30 May 2025, made the direction explicit: the budget cuts funding for the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program by more than 25% — from $143 million to $100 million — and omits the longstanding prohibition on the destruction of healthy wild horses and burros and their sale for commercial slaughter.

With 64,000 wild horses and burros already confined in federal holding facilities — long-term corrals and maintenance sites scattered across the western states — the reduced budget would be almost entirely consumed by the bare costs of housing and feeding those animals. Virtually nothing would remain for so-called non-lethal management measures: birth control programmes, private adoption campaigns, transfers to sanctuaries. These are precisely the tools that protection organisations have been advocating for years as an alternative to mass slaughter or euthanasia. The budget cut is therefore a choice that systematically closes off the path to humane solutions, leaving the administration with a single economically viable option for reducing the number of animals in custody: killing them.

Beyond that, the budget removes slaughter protections from the transfer provision, allows the BLM to give wild horses free of charge to state, local and federal agencies — after which they lose their protected status — and broadens the pool of parties authorised to request such transfers, including "approved" individuals, non-profit organisations, and foreign governments.

With American slaughterhouses effectively shuttered — Congress has for years prohibited the Department of Agriculture (USDA) from funding the mandatory veterinary inspections required at equine slaughter facilities, making their operation on US soil impossible — the trajectory set out by the budget is the live export of horses to Canada or Mexico, where equine slaughterhouses operate without restriction. A solution that shifts the problem across the border, out of sight and out of reach of the American public.

The plan implements the recommendations of the "Project 2025" document, which calls on Congress to grant the BLM the authority to "humanely dispose" of "excess" wild horses and burros.

The House holds. The Senate, not yet

This is not the first time this battle has been fought. In 2017, the House passed a spending bill that eliminated the ban. But the mobilisation was widespread: television campaigns, op-eds, grassroots pressure. Some 80% of Americans supported the protection of wild horses. The Senate held the line, and the ban remained in place.

In 2026, the House Appropriations Committee included in its Interior Department funding bill a provision reinstating the slaughter ban, correcting the omission in the presidential budget proposal. The measure appropriates $144 million for the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program. Suzanne Roy, executive director of American Wild Horse Conservation (AWHC), described the provision as one that "reaffirms Congressional intent to prohibit slaughter." But the Senate spending bill has not yet been released, and the fate of wild horses therefore remains uncertain.

Who defends the Mustangs

Several significant organisations are active on the protection front in the United States. American Wild Horse Conservation (AWHC, americanwildhorse.org) is the largest organisation for the protection of wild horses and burros, engaged for decades in congressional lobbying and public awareness campaigns. Skydog Ranch & Sanctuary, founded by Clare Staples with facilities in California and Oregon, provides permanent sanctuary for Mustangs captured by the government, restoring whenever possible each horse to the company of its original herd. Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation (RTF), founded by Neda DeMayo in California in 1997, manages the American Wild Horse Sanctuary and has contributed to the rescue and rehoming of more than 2,000 at-risk equids. Wild Horse Education, led by Laura Leigh, focuses on the monitoring and documentation of roundups in the field.

A story that goes beyond America

This is not a story geographically distant from what IHP observes and denounces every day in Italy. The difference is that in the United States the animals in question are protected by federal law and live wild on public lands. And yet — according to what the New York Times investigation has revealed — the path to the slaughterhouse is identical: a chain of intermediaries, falsified or circumvented documents, transport to countries where the rules are different.

As Humane World for Animals has noted, the lack of transparency and the questionable dealings described by the New York Times are not unique to wild horses. Thoroughbreds, Standardbreds, Amish horses, backyard horses — all can disappear into the same opaque network of dealers, brokers, auctions and intermediaries. It is a pipeline that IHP knows well.

The Mustang question is, at its core, the same question that IHP has been raising for years: who really controls where horses end up? And with what documentation? The answer, on both sides of the Atlantic, is still too often: no one.

Sources: New York Times (20 August 2026); American Wild Horse Conservation, americanwildhorse.org; Humane World for Animals, humaneworld.org; Cowboy State Daily, cowboystatedaily.com; Congressional Research Service archives; Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, Public Law 92-195 (1971).
Photo: SteppinStars, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons