Photo taken at RTF’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary.
The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board gave a push to the Bureau of Land Management to complete the steps necessary for significant wild horse management changes to occur.
In recommendations finalized Thursday at the board’s meeting in Phoenix, the board called on the BLM to complete rulemaking and regulation updates that the agency maintains must be finished in order to make programmatic changes.
One example: altering the controversial Adoption Incentive Program.
“The Wild Horse and Burro Program has prioritized completing the rulemaking, but the BLM hasn’t,” said Return to Freedom biologist Celeste Carlisle, the Advisory Board’s chair. “It’s boring and its process but the recommendation enables us to say, ‘OK, let’s hurry up and get (rulemaking updates) out of the way.’”
The nine-member volunteer advisory board makes recommendations to the BLM and U.S. Forest Service regarding wild horse and burro management but does not control policy.
Another recommendation issued by the Advisory Board on Thursday touched on the adoption program more directly.
It called on the BLM to find out what has happened to a “statistically significant percentage” of wild horses and burros placed or sold into private care over the last five years – something that the agency can move on without rulemaking being complete.
“We hear complaints about the adoption program and Return to Freedom is concerned but there’s not been a good analysis of what happens to these horses,” Carlisle said.
The goal is to not only find holes in the program but discover what may be working well, including public-private partnerships, she said.
Return to Freedom and others have presented the BLM with evidence that its $ 1,000-per-animal adoption incentive is resulting in wild horses and burros being held for a year then adopters pocketing the incentive and selling horses at auction yards where kill buyers are waiting.
If the adoption incentives are to continue, Return to Freedom and other stakeholders have said in meetings with the agency, cash payouts ought to be replaced with vouchers for veterinary care and other needs and other steps should also be taken to safeguard adopted horses.
The Advisory Board, too, has previously issued a statement of concern about the adoption program and called on the BLM to investigate the use of vouchers over cash.
The Advisory Board also recommended:
–that the BLM and USFS present at the next board meeting plans that determine ecosystem health and wild horse population stabilization at two Herd Management Areas (BLM) or Wild Horse Territories and demonstrate how the PopEquus model can be utilized to attain management outcomes.
Previously, the BLM modeled the effect of removals on herd population. PopEquus is a more sophisticated modeling tool that enables the BLM to model the impact of different types of fertility control, removals, holding costs and budgets.
The board is seeking a deeper understanding of trade-offs in management options, Carlisle said.
–that the Chief of the Forest Service must advocate for a funded, multi-year budget line to support the agency’s program. The board made a similar recommendation in June.
Currently, the BLM is subsidizing the USFS wild horse program. If either of the agencies is to make changes like implementing fertility control more robustly instead of relying on capture and removal, as advocates like RTF have long called for, Carlisle said, both agencies need sufficient funding.
“Otherwise, there’s no chance of them doing anything different,” she said.
–that the BLM request that the BLM Foundation serve as a funding source for off-range holding so that resources can be freed up for on-range management, like fertility control.