January 18, 2019
Dozens of ranchers and other landowners contracted by the Bureau of Land Management to care for thousands of federally protected wild horses and burros will once again start getting paid as the partial government shutdown drags on.
The news comes after several owners of privately contracted corrals and pastures told E&E News this week they've not been paid since the shutdown began last month (Greenwire, Jan. 17).
In an emailed statement to E&E News late yesterday, BLM said it is aware that "many" of the contracted landowners "that undertake this work on behalf of the BLM have experienced delays in the payment of invoices for the services provided."
But the statement adds that BLM "is taking steps to remedy this situation and ensure that payments to vendors are made so that the care of the horses and burros continues."
The agency says the payments "will be made with prior year appropriations funding, which will cover the near-term maintenance of the animals."
The statement does not indicate how much money is available, nor does it say when the payments will begin. It also does not say how long payments would continue if the shutdown goes on indefinitely, as President Trump has vowed unless Congress agrees to fund his U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The vast majority of wild horses and burros rounded up and removed from federal rangelands across the West — about 35,000 animals — are housed in off-range corrals and holding pens on private ranches in Idaho, Nevada and Utah, or in private pastures, predominantly in Kansas and Oklahoma.
BLM contracts with those landowners for the use of their pastureland, or for the use of corrals and holding pens that can house the wild horses temporarily while the bureau works to arrange for the sale or adoption of each animal.
The agency said in a statement earlier this week that the "contracts are currently funded," before reversing course late yesterday and acknowledging that "many" are not being paid due to the "lapse in funding" caused by the shutdown.
The missed payments do not appear to be a major issue for the contractors, at least for now. Two told E&E News this week that they prepared for the shutdown, including a Utah rancher who bought months' worth of feed for the more than 1,000 horses under his care in the event the shutdown drags on for months.
BLM is required by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 to care for the more than 46,000 animals that have been rounded up and removed from nearly 27 million acres of federal rangelands, mostly in the West. The law mandates that BLM remove the excess animals once the population exceeds the maximum number that regulators believe the rangeland can handle without causing damage to vegetation, soil and other resources.
There are more than 55,000 excess wild horses and burros on federal rangelands, BLM says.
Nearly a quarter of the animals that have been rounded up so far — roughly 11,000 horses and burros — are cared for in BLM-operated holding corrals and pens, according to agency information.
While the government shutdown has resulted in tens of thousands of Interior Department employees getting furloughed, BLM's shutdown contingency plan lists employees involved in "the management of wild horse and burro holding facilities" as "excepted" from furlough, though it does not mention contracted corrals and pastures.
The "care and feeding of wild horses and burros is an excepted activity ... and therefore continues while there is a lapse in funding," the BLM statement says.
