Photo taken at the Sand Wash Herd Management Area in Colorado by Meg Frederick.
Some 2,000 wild horses at the Cañon City, Colo., state prison complex will need to be transferred to other off-range holding facilities. About 30 inmates cared for and training captured horses for adoption.
Similar programs remain in California, Nevada, Arizona and Wyoming.
Return to Freedom’s goal is to see wild horses and burros remain free on our public lands. Decades of government roundups have removed and continue to prevent tens of thousands of horses from being returned to the range, however.
When run properly with a patient and skilled trainer and paired with adopter education, training and adoption programs can help provide horses a positive life in which they are cared for safely and humanely.
Training programs also decrease failed adoptions that result in wild horses ending up at auction, where kill buyers can purchase and ship them to slaughter in Mexico or Canada.
The Cañon City program was not without problems.
In 2022, 146 wild horses died there in an outbreak of equine flu. A review found that the understaffed facility noncompliant on 13 Bureau of Land Management policies — including failing to vaccinate horses within 30 days of arrival.
More than 64,000 wild horses and burros captured in government roundups live in off-range facilities compared to the estimated 73,000 roaming rangelands overseen by the BLM.
The warehoused horses and burros are the sad product of the agency’s failed attempt to meet its own population targets through capture and removal, rather than by implementing proven, safe and humane fertility control that can slow herd growth without stopping it.