The Bureau of Land Management has provided Congress with a long-awaited blueprint for managing wild horses and burros that provides several options but suggests the agency may need the flexibility to sell or transfer animals without limitation, and to euthanize some animals.
The report lists four choices and does not recommend any one — backing away from President Trump's $1.1 billion fiscal 2019 budget request for BLM that proposes to reduce growing herds of wild horses and burros by allowing animals to easily be transferred to other government agencies and, in cases involving older, injured or sick animals, to be euthanized.
That's according to an advance copy of the 45-page report obtained by E&E News.
The report is set to be delivered to Congress today, according to an email from Mark Brown, BLM's legislative affairs specialist, to congressional staffers.
Congress asked for the report last year and scolded the agency in the recently approved fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill for failing to "provide a comprehensive plan" in a timely manner (Greenwire, March 22).
BLM has been searching for years for solutions to growing herd sizes. There are currently more than 75,000 wild horses and burros roaming across roughly 27 million acres of federal herd management areas. That's nearly 50,000 more animals than the appropriate management level, or what regulators believe is the maximum number the rangeland can handle without causing damage to vegetation, soils and other resources.
Ultimately, BLM requests that "Congress examine each of the options and advise on which of the tools it deems most suitable for addressing this urgent challenge."
But the option to sell, transfer or euthanize animals is the first listed, and BLM lays out a detailed case that concludes the agency could reach the appropriate levels of wild horses and burros on federal rangelands in eight years.
It calls for Congress to "remove prohibitions" placed into appropriations bills that forbid it from using euthanasia and limit its ability to sell animals, as authorized under the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971.
"This would allow the BLM to sell without limitation all excess wild horses and burros, and in the event an adoption or sale demand by qualified individuals does not exist, destroy excess wild horses and burros in the most humane and cost-efficient manner possible," Option 1 states.
This would allow BLM to "focus on placing excess horses and burros into private care through adoptions and sales, including international sales to countries for agricultural, law enforcement, park management, and other uses. Animals not placed in private care would be sold without limitation or euthanized," the report says. It also calls for the increased use of permanent sterilization methods.
Doing so would help to "dramatically" reduce the number of wild horses and burros in holding pens and corrals, it says.
BLM spends more than $50 million a year — roughly two-thirds of the annual Wild Horse and Burro Program budget — to feed and care for the thousands of wild horses and burros removed from the range in off-site corrals and holding pens.
The agency has warned Congress in the past that it could cost as much as $1 billion to feed and care for the rounded-up horses and burros over their lifetime.
BLM would need to complete an analysis required under the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as some resource management planning. But the report says the agency could begin implementing this option by fiscal 2021.
This option would allow BLM to reach appropriate management levels within all herd-management areas (HMAs) by 2028 "with increasingly less annual appropriations."
It adds, "Range conditions would continue to improve over this time and animals will be less likely to move outside of the HMAs."
Option 1 of the report has similar measures to those recommended by BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board last year. The advisory panel recommended BLM remove — and destroy if necessary — thousands of excess animals that federal officials concede the vast Western rangelands can no longer sustain.
Euthanasia, in particular, is staunchly opposed by wild horse advocates and a number of Democrats in Congress.
Other options in the report include dramatically increasing funding for BLM's wild horses and burros program and increasing horse gathers.
