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Under Trump, protected wild horses being sold and sent toward slaughter

animalsAug 23, 2026211,794

The New York Times reports the Trump administration is using a legal loophole to sell federally protected wild mustangs cheaply, clearing a path for some to enter the slaughter pipeline. Congress designated unclaimed, free-roaming horses on certain federal lands as protected symbols of the American West in 1971, but the Bureau of Land Management now rounds up herds with low-flying helicopters, corrals them, and moves them to government holding facilities. Tens of thousands of horses and burros sit in BLM custody, costing taxpayers about $100 million a year and roughly $6 per animal per day at short-term corrals. The administration has pushed for “large-scale placement and sales initiatives,” and BLM sales more than doubled from 2024 to 2025, with some animals reportedly offered for as little as $25. Once sold, the agency generally stops tracking animals, and animal-welfare groups have documented formerly federal horses showing up at livestock auctions and kill pens, with many sent abroad because the United States currently lacks operating commercial horse slaughterhouses. Project 2025 explicitly recommends allowing BLM to “dispose humanely” of excess animals, and federal documents have discussed using marksmen, gunshots, or even gas chambers as population-control measures, while BLM maintains it will ban buyers who funnel horses to slaughter.

Alt National Park Service
@altnps.bsky.social

You think Trump can’t possibly become any worse of a monster, and then you find out his administration is sending America’s wild horses to slaughterhouses. What the Trump administration is doing to our wild horses is absolutely disgusting. 🤮 There has to be a line.

15074h ago
3 sources