Wild horses in off-range holding. While most captured wild horses end up in off-range holding corrals or on leased pastures, more were being adopted out — and placed at risk of being auctioned off to kill buyers — under the Bureau of Land Management’s cash incentive program. Photo by Meg Frederick.

By Celeste Carlisle, RTF biologist

On March 3, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ruled the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro adoption Incentive Program (AIP) to be insufficient to safeguard federally protected animals, and was not done in accordance with federal law. This essentially shut down the contentious AIP.

We are pleased and heartened, because anytime animals are partnered with cash giveaways, the opportunists come out, and the potential that animals will suffer is almost guaranteed.

Litigation is expensive, not ideal, and can result in unintended consequences. Obviously, if there are ways around a punitive stance like a lawsuit, those ways are preferred. In this instance, those preferred ways were attempted, but they were bogged down by so much bureaucratic process that a non-litigious way out became impossible.  The failure of the AIP to be a lithe, adaptable program lead to its own demise, at least temporarily.

As a reminder, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rolled out the AIP in 2019. Adopters would receive a $1,000 cash incentive to take home an untrained wild horse or burro.

Return to Freedom and many other wild horse and animal welfare organizations cautioned the BLM that offering a cash incentive could lead to disaster. Sure enough, we began receiving reports of recently cashed out wild horses in auction yards.

We immediately called for the AIP to be halted, at least until the end of a thorough outside investigation, the elimination of most cash bonuses, and for safeguards to be put into place that better protect wild horses and burros that once freely roamed our public lands from falling into the slaughter pipeline.

We pushed for replacing cash incentives with vouchers to help with needs like veterinary care or training (a suggested exception being nonprofit rescue and sanctuary organizations in good standing, which often take more than one or two animals at a time, and could benefit from compensation to help with transportation and feed costs.)

We also called for a well-researched database of unsafe adopters to prevent them from participating in the program.

Our supporters agreed. They sent thousands of letters to Congress laying out these same concerns, as well as suggested refinements to the program – refinements necessary to continue such a program at all.

In 2021, The New York Times described how horses adopted through the AIP were effectively being “flipped,” with owners receiving title and their $1,000 incentive from the BLM as well as whatever they could get at a sales barn — walking away from their presumably adopted-to-a-good-home horse days after receiving title.  Return to Freedom continued sending verified information to the BLM documenting these horses sold at auction shortly (sometimes only a day or two) after their owners received title.

It must be stated that the 1971 Act mandates that a titled wild horse or burro is no longer under the care or protection of the BLM.  This has been another conflating portion of the problem that advocates have with the AIP: it is understood that the law is the law, and BLM really has no power to do anything about someone selling their own, titled horse at auction.  Bluntly: that horse is theirs to do whatever they please with, whether we like it or not.

However, the BLM states that their adoption program wants to “ensure adopted wild horses and burros go to good homes.” Someone who receives $1000 to hang on to a horse for exactly the one year until titling, then quickly sells it at auction to cash out and move on is not a “good home.”

In 2021 and 2022, BLM announced tweaks to the program in response to criticisms. These included raising the adoption fee from $25 to $125 and requiring compliance inspections within six months of adoption rather than 12. These changes failed to allay our concerns or those of other advocates.

Frustration and tensions mounted. In the spring and summer of 2022, a series of stakeholder meetings were facilitated for the BLM by a professional mediation group, and included people and organizations present from government agencies, animal welfare organizations (specifically wild horse advocacy groups), public lands conservation organizations and universities. There was general agreement that:

• cash incentives can be taken advantage of;
• vouchers instead of cash seem like a good idea (for vet care, transportation, training, farrier, feed);
• gentled horses don’t tend to show up for sale later; and
• a broad network of support for people who adopt could be a positive outcome for the BLM’s adoption program in general.

By the last of three facilitated discussions, the following ideas to improve the AIP program were communicated to the BLM, and compiled into a report by the mediation group. Not all of the ideas were possible because of law and policy (government cannot collect data on individuals, for example), but they could perhaps be some part of refining the program:

• language could be strengthened in adoption contracts so that horses would be returned if they could no longer be cared for;
• people who had essentially utilized the AIP to “flip” horses could be banned from adopting again;
• compliance checks could be beefed up;
• enforcement ability for BLM and/or local or state enforcement could be expanded after titling;
• adoption agreement could be amended to allow for compliance checks after titling;
• time to titling could be extended;
• protection of BLM horses and burros could extend past 1 year (3-5 or a lifetime);
• expand what vouchers could be used for;
• stringent pre-adoption applications and background checks to pre-approve applicants;
• obtain additional data about people and their horses or burros post-adoption so that tweaks to program will be appropriate to what’s really going on with adopted animals;
• education to help people understand that adopting an animal is a long term commitment; and
• expansion of a community and network of adopters.

The Complicated Aftermath

For months, stakeholders who participated in the discussions heard nothing. The report compiled by the mediation group did not seem to see the light of day; it was never released publicly or shared with stakeholder participants. Eventually, the stakeholder meeting information was internally communicated to Tracy Stone Manning, the Director of the BLM at the time, who expressed that the stakeholder process had not been a publicly noticed process, and was therefore irrelevant. A public commenting period would have to be convened, but that would not be possible until BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Rulemaking Process were completed.

Congress requires that agencies issue regulations to comply with congressional direction.  The rulemaking process creates those federal regulations. They require drafting any new rules or updates, appropriate internal editing and sign offs, public notification of that document, public comments, response to public comments, working through any appeals if necessary, and ultimate sign off on a new rule, which BLM, in this case, then utilizes to develop policies to manage our public lands (and the wild horses and burros on those lands).

But updates to the BLM’s wild horse and burro program rules have stalled.  Updates have been drafted, and while the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program is pushing for the process to codify them, the agency has many other rulemaking procedures that it has prioritized.

The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, frustrated that refinement of the AIP (among other things) would not and could not occur without completion of the rulemaking process, recommended in December 2023 that the agency prioritize the Wild Horse and Burro Program Rulemaking Process.

Not until the next advisory board meeting, more than a year later, in January 2025, was a response provided by the BLM: “The BLM has drafted updates to the regulations and is awaiting further direction. The BLM will alert the Board when the regulation update effort resumes.”

No rulemaking completed, no pursuit of public input towards improvement of the AIP possible, but continued reports of recently-titled wild horses in well-known, kill-buyer-frequented auctions.

Ultimately, it was the court’s ruling that halted the flawed AIP.  Advocates tried every other avenue to end the program or improve it. Filing lawsuits isn’t ideal, as it is a difficult and often slow process to take on a government agency in that way, and it can reduce more collaborative interactions. It’s also costly. If there are other routes available, we prefer to take those routes, and spend that money on helping horses. Sometimes, though, as with issues like plans to surgically sterilize or remove rangeland from wild horse use, it can be necessary to litigate.

The Perhaps-Ironic Protections of Bureaucracy

It’s easy to complain about bureaucracy, with its stubborn inefficiency and the perceptions that it’s a system bogged down, resistant to change.  A government without bureaucracy, however, risks mission creep at best, and special interests controlling the levers at worst.  These highly defined systems can confuse and frustrate those of us advocating for faster change, especially when we are concerned about the welfare of wild horses and burros – issues that must be addressed quickly because lives are involved.  But we cannot proceed strategically unless we understand the systems at play, and even appreciate that they are there.  Alienating the people within a long chain of command is counter to collaboration and stymies the good change we so wish for.

Return to Freedom will continue to carefully navigate the bureaucracy around the AIP, and any other systemic hang-ups, to solidify and strengthen protections for wild horses and burros.  Meantime, we appreciate the judge’s ruling to halt the AIP – for now.