Ciscomani joins bipartisan call for review of wild horse sales

Representative Juan Ciscomani signed a letter this month asking for greater oversight of the sale of wild horses by the federal government.

Ciscomani joined 16 other lawmakers in a call for the government to conduct a review of the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Sales Program. The program, which allows private buyers to purchase wild horses after they are rounded up by the BLM, has allegedly resulted in mustangs being sent to slaughterhouses.

The BLM rounds up wild horses to keep populations stable, but holding them is costly.

Under the Wild Horse and Burro Sales Program, the BLM can offload its horses to buyers and save money on care costs, either through sales or adoptions. Though it is illegal for BLM or their buyers to kill the horses, buyers are free to sell them to middlemen, who can then go on to sell them to slaughterhouses.

The letter calls for an independent review of the Sales Program from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in order to “help Congress determine whether the Sale Program is functioning as a legitimate placement mechanism or has become a pathway through which federally protected wild horses and burros can predictably enter the slaughter pipeline after title transfers."

Arizona is home to an estimated 268 mustangs and over 13,000 burros. According to the BLM, the maximum combined number of horses and burros that can “thrive in balance with other public land resources and uses” is just 1,676.

Aside from holding them, there are few other options available to the BLM. There are no commercial horse slaughter facilities in the United States, and the BLM cannot legally cull the herds. One alternative is birth control, which can be administered via dart — but according to reporting from \ The New York Times\ , the BLM spends too much of its budget on housing captured horses to invest in birth control medication and equipment.

The letter is not the first time Ciscomani has taken a stance on the issue. In 2025 he became a Co-Chair of the Congressional Wild Horse Caucus, where he partnered with other lawmakers — including Representative David Schwiekert of Arizona’s 1st Congressional District — to introduce a bill that would ban the use of helicopters in rounding up mustangs.