Congressional appropriators this week rejected President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Bureau of Land Management that called for zeroing out funding for the bureau’s renewable energy office and cultural resource protection.
The fiscal 2026 funding blueprint for the Interior Department, EPA and related agencies that lawmakers rolled out Monday would also allocate full funding for BLM’s wild horse and burro program, which stands at $144 million.
Trump’s budget request to Congress in May proposed slashing the wild horse funding to $106 million — a nearly 25 percent cut compared to fiscal 2025 enacted levels, raising concerns among some lawmakers about whether the bureau could still properly manage thousands of horses and burros on overcrowded rangelands across the West.
Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal requested cutting overall BLM funding by 33 percent — to $936 million from $1.4 billion.
