Coalition of 61 U.S. Senators and Reps Urge Federal Appropriators to Include FY22 Funding to mandate PZP Fertility Control for Wild Horses

Today, Representatives Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Dina Titus (D-NV) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) led a letter with 58 fellow Congressional colleagues to Senate and House Appropriations Committee and Interior Subcommittee leaders, requesting Interior Department appropriations language for the final FY22 spending package promotes the humane and fiscally responsible management of America’s iconic wild horses and burros. The letter also urges Appropriation Committees to bolster the House report language by explicitly calling for an Office of Inspector General investigation of the Adoption Incentive Program. 

The House and Senate FY22 Interior Appropriations bills both include $11 million of dedicated funding to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the implementation of humane, reversible fertility control vaccines. Currently, the BLM spends upwards of $64 million tax dollars annually rounding up wild horses and warehousing them in long-term holding facilities.

The letter reads in part:

​​“As you work to complete the final Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) spending bill, we write to thank you for including $11 million in dedicated funding for the implementation of humane, proven, and reversible immunocontraceptive vaccines in the House and Senate Interior Appropriations bills for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro (WHB) Program, and we urge you to maintain this funding in the final FY22 spending bill.

“This funding is critical for BLM to implement scientifically supported fertility control to ensure an effective and sustainable herd management strategy. Presently, the BLM WHB Program spends less than one percent of its budget implementing fertility control, instead pursuing a fiscally irresponsible, ineffective, and injurious approach of removing horses and keeping them indefinitely in holding facilities. We remain concerned about BLM’s May 2020 strategy, which called for mass removals of wild horses and burros from the range, including 20,000 next year alone. Further, as a recent New York
Times exposé revealed, horses and burros that leave the holding system through the Adoption Incentive
Program are at risk of slaughter." 

​See the entire letter here.