Nevada’s wild horses are one sentence away from mass euthanasia

In a matter of weeks, Congress will decide the fate of a single sentence buried deep in the Interior–Environment appropriations bill — a sentence that, for 17 years, has barred the mass euthanasia of healthy, unadopted wild horses. Right now, that protection remains in both the House and Senate versions. But when the bill heads to conference committee, a handful of lawmakers will have the power to strike it in a closed-door deal, with no public debate. If it disappears, tens of thousands of wild horses could be killed on the taxpayer’s dime.

For Nevada, where wild horses roam and roundups have become tragically routine, the stakes are intensely local and deeply personal. In just one recent roundup at the Triple B Complex, a total of 27 horses died. After the Roberts Mountain roundup ,