After The New York Times published a story in August 2026 alleging that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was allowing the sale of protected wild horses to slaughterhouses, a rumor spread online claiming that Project 2025 endorsed such actions to cut costs.
Project 2025, a policy paper by the Heritage Foundation that in many ways has acted as a blueprint for the second Trump administration, has argued that the bureau needs to be able cut costs by killing horses and said that Congress “must enact laws permitting the [Bureau of Land Management] to dispose humanely of these animals.”
It is true that Project 2025 endorses a plan allowing the Bureau of Land Management to “humanely” dispose of wild horses. However, the Project 2025 authors don’t frame the issue as a cost-cutting measure. Instead, they argue that culling wild horses could help fix overpopulation and prevent further damage to natural ecosystems on public lands.
The document does mention the taxpayer cost of caring for wild horses, but it isn’t outright referred to as a reason to kill wild horses.
Since it’s unclear whether Project 2025’s authors considered cutting costs as a primary reason to cull wild horses, we have rated this claim a mixture of true and undetermined information.
We reached out to The Heritage Foundation and Dave Phillips, the reporter behind the New York Times’ story on wild horses, for more information and await a response. In an emailed statement, the Bureau of Land Management did not directly address our questions about whether the agency has a financial incentive to cull horses. Instead, the statement focused on denying claims about sending horses to slaughter.
“The Bureau of Land Management does not sell or send wild horses or burros to slaughter, and allegations that individuals are violating federal law or the terms governing the sale of these animals are taken seriously,” the
The agency encouraged anyone with information regarding potential violations to report it to the bureau at 1‑866‑468‑7826 or wildhorse@blm.gov.
Snopes previously reported that the New York Times’ Aug. 20 story included “very strong circumstantial evidence” but no definitive proof of the Trump administration’s alleged use of a legal loophole to send wild horses to slaughter.
What does Project 2025 say about wild horses?
Project 2025 outlines its argument for culling wild horses on PDF Page 560 of the approximately 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document, which is available on The Heritage Foundation’s website.
The full
In 1971, Congress ordered the BLM to manage wild horses and burros to ensure their iconic presence never disappeared from the western landscape. For decades, Congress watched as these herds overwhelmed the land’s ability to sustain them, crowded out indigenous plant and other animal species, threatened the survival of species listed under the Endangered Species Act, invaded private and permitted public land, disturbed private property rights, and turned the sod into concrete. BLM experts said in 2019 that some affected land will never recover from this unmitigated damage.
There are 95,000 wild horses and burros roaming nearly 32 million acres in the West—triple what scientists and land management experts say the range can support. These animals face starvation and death from lack of forage and water. The population has more than doubled in just the past 10 years and continues to grow at a rate of 10 to 15 percent annually. This number includes the more than 47,000 animals the BLM has already gathered from public lands, at a cost to the American taxpayer of nearly $50 million annually to care for them in off-range corrals.
This is not a new issue—it is not just a western issue—it is an American issue. What is happening to these once-proud beasts of burden is neither compassionate nor humane, and what these animals are doing to federal lands and fragile ecosystems is unacceptable. In 2019, the American Association of Equine Practitioners and the American Veterinary Medication Association—two of the largest organizations of professional veterinarians in the world—issued a joint policy calling for further reducing overpopulation to protect the health and well-being of wild horses and burros on public lands. The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, a panel of nine experts and professionals convened to advise the BLM, endorsed the joint policy. Furthermore, animal welfare organizations such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society of the United States recognize that the prosperity of wild horses and burros on public lands is threatened if herds continue to grow unabated.
The BLM’s multi-pronged approach in its 2020 Report to Congress included expanded adoptions and sales of horses gathered from overpopulated herds; increased gathers and increased capacity for off-range holding facilities and pastures; more effective use of fertility control efforts; and improved research, in concert with the academic and veterinary communities, to identify more effective contraceptive techniques and strategies. All of that will not be enough to solve the problem, however. Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.
As shown above, there is a single mention of the cost of maintaining off-range corrals, which the bureau uses in an attempt to control overpopulation. However, the writers’ argument is focused on the supposed benefits of culling wild horses to the animals themselves and the ecosystem, and there’s no explicit statement that euthanizing wild horses would cut costs.
In fact, earlier in the report, on PDF Page 558, The Heritage Foundation suggests potentially spending more money on reducing overpopulation of wild horses. After describing various ways the Bureau of Land Management might save some money, the authors write (emphasis ours):
Those funds can be devoted to reducing the risk of wildfires, increasing recreational opportunities, conserving public lands, and addressing tough issues such as wild horses and burros.
It’s unclear, however, whether the authors intended for the government to spend more money on culling wild horses, specifically. It appears that the authors may have intended that the Bureau of Land Management spend more money on this issue in the short-term to save money long-term, but that’s not plainly stated.
An additional search for the phrase “wild horses” returned no results within Project 2025 for proposals that outright call for killing horses to cut costs.
For more on Project 2025, see our collection of stories about The Heritage Foundation initiative.
Project 2025’s proposal compared to current law
As we previously reported, the Bureau of Land Management has long struggled with crafting policy that legally, effectively and
While Project 2025 calls for Congress to permit the Bureau of Land Management to cull wild horses, technically, the agency already has the legal right to. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 — the same act that protects wild horses and burros from “capture, branding, harassment, or death” — allows the federal agency to euthanize excess animals “in the most humane and cost efficient manner possible” (Sec. 1333b2C).
However, a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office found that the bureau hesitated to do this because it was “thought to be unacceptable to the public” (Page 56).
The Bureau of Land Management spent $101 million — 66% of its budget — on its off-range corrals and pastures in fiscal year 2024.
“BLM has a legal responsibility to manage wild horse and burro populations to maintain healthy herds on healthy public lands. When populations exceed what the land can sustainably support, animals can face inadequate forage and water, declining body condition and other serious consequences,” the agency said in its emailed statement to Snopes.
For more on the bureau’s attempts to control wild horse populations, see our original story on The New York Times’ reporting.
