Land managers are ramping up efforts to find homes for Colorado wild horses after capturing an unprecedented number in recent years as part of a national effort to thin herds.
About 2,200 mustangs have been rounded up via helicopter and bait-and-trap operations since 2021, and now federal officials are scrambling to increase adoptions and find long-term pasture options.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is seeking bids until Jan. 10 from ranchers or other landowners who want to contract with the federal agency to keep wild horses for the rest of their lives. The BLM currently contracts with 38 landowners in the country — none of whom are in Colorado.
There are about 450 horses eligible for adoption or long-term pasture right now in Colorado.
Mustangs removed from the wild landscape are first sent to temporary holding pens on state prison grounds in Cañon City, where they are vaccinated and acclimated to living around humans. As of the most current count, in September, the prison pens had 1,854 horses and 48 burros.
Those that are deemed fit for adoption are hauled to adoption events around the state. Horses that are older than 10 or have not been adopted after three attempts are sent to sanctuaries or long-term pasture. It’s against federal law to sell them for slaughter, though investigations have found that some end up there.
The federal agency is seeking pastures across the West that can hold from 500 to 2,000 horses each. The BLM wants placements in Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington or Wyoming, and wants to award “multiple contracts” for up to 10 years.
Meeker Mustang Makeover part of $25 million investment
Besides searching for long-term pastures, the federal agency is investing more in organizations that find homes for wild horses.
The Meeker Mustang Makeover, a northwestern Colorado organization that runs a horse-training contest, was one of five groups nationwide to win BLM funding. The Meeker organization was awarded at least $100,000 per year for two years with the potential to receive up to $700,000.
The money is part of a $25 million initiative to find homes for 11,000 wild horses and burros within five years. The federal agency estimates the initiative could save taxpayers $160 million if it moves thousands of horses out of holding facilities around the country.
The Mustang Makeover, which began in 2019, gives competitors 120 days to train wild horses, which are then auctioned off each August to the highest bidders after the trainers show off the horses’ new skills in front of judges and potential buyers. The trainers get to take home half of the payout, and the other half goes to the nonprofit organization to run the operation. This year, the top selling horse, “Hoolihan,” sold for $18,500.
The federal agency has also stepped up adoption efforts, including more events and more marketing. Adoption events in 2025 are planned for Cañon City, Castle Rock and Grand Junction, as well as online adoptions, BLM communications director Steven Hall said.
“BLM gathers addressed an unprecedented high number of wild horses on public lands that degraded land health and impacted wildlife,” Hall said.
The federal agency is also participating in Colorado’s Wild Horse Working Group, created a year ago with a new state law. The group has discussed creating a state-run wild horse sanctuary, where the public could see horses that had been removed from the wild. The topic has stalled somewhat in recent months, however, as discussion centered on the high cost of purchasing land for such a sanctuary.
Some members of the group also were concerned that a state-run sanctuary would compete with private landowners interested in contracting with the BLM to keep horses, according to the group’s first-year report. Also, the state has a few privately run sanctuaries, including the 23,000-acre Wild Horse Refuge near Craig. The nonprofit refuge sells land at $777 per acre to donors who want horses to “truly remain wild and free.”
Doreen, a 5-year-old mare rounded up from the Swasey Herd Management Area in Utah, voluntarily hops in the pickup truck led by Eric Pflueger, from Nunn, during the performance at the Meeker Mustang Makeover, Aug. 27, 2022, at the Rio Blanco Fairgrounds. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)Fertility vaccine efforts will increase next year
Federal and state officials have concentrated instead on fertility control options that would help maintain herd sizes of the remaining 1,300 wild horses roaming free in Colorado.
Colorado pledged to spend $100,000 to assist the federal government in giving fertility vaccines to wild horses in 2025. The goal is to administer fertility control to at least 425 mares next year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services will use the funds to train eight people, two for each of the state’s four herd management areas — the Little Book Cliffs near Palisade, Sand Wash Basin near the Wyoming border, the Piceance-East Douglas in northwestern Colorado, and the Spring Creek in southwestern Colorado’s Disappointment Valley.
The teams, which shoot mares with fertility darts, began training in December. Until now, fertility darting has been done mainly by volunteers in partner organizations, including the Piceance Mustangs.
Cindy Day scans the Piceance-East Douglas Herd Management Area for wild mares, June 21, 2023, near Meeker. Day, in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management, fires darts with a fertility vaccine. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)Three out of the four herd management areas — all but the Piceance-East Douglas — are “close to the appropriate management level,” which is the number of horses the federal agency deems appropriate to “manage healthy horses on healthy land,” Hall said. “Fertility control will not reduce herd size, but will slow down their growth,” he said. “Sand Wash Basin is recovering from wild horse overgrazing, and species like the greater sage grouse are rebounding.”
The federal agency removed more than 600 horses from Sand Wash with a helicopter three years ago. Other recent helicopter roundups resulted in the removal of about 570 horses on West Douglas rangeland in 2021 and 2023, and about 820 horses from Piceance-East Douglas in 2022. The Piceance still has about 600 horses, while the BLM says it should have no more than 230.
The latest wild horse removal was at Little Book Cliffs near Palisade, which removed about 100 horses.
The state Wild Horse Working Group so far visited horses in holding pens at the state prison, herd management areas, and at refuges in Colorado. Among other recommendations, the group is asking for better data from the federal government.
Unknown number of wild horses are on private, tribal land
“There needs to be more firm data on how many wild horses there are and how many there will be in the future,” the group wrote in its first-year report. In particular, there are unknown but “large numbers” of wild horses outside of the four herd management areas, including on private, state, federal and tribal lands, particularly in the San Luis Valley and southwestern Colorado.
An estimated 40 wild horses are roaming Mesa Verde National Park, which is not a designated mustang area. Horses in the park are considered “trespassed livestock” and don’t have the same protections as wild horses on designated herd management land.
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4:00 AM MDT on Jul 8, 20249:25 AM MDT on Jul 8, 2024In the past four years, the National Mustang Association Colorado has taken 47 horses from the national park and either adopted them out or placed them in sanctuaries. An entire band, or family unit, that included a stallion, six mares and two colts, was captured through a bait-and-trap operation this year and taken to the Wild Horse Refuge near Craig, said Brenda Van Keuren, an association board member.
Van Keuren is among the wild horse advocates who are concerned that Colorado does not have enough space, or enough adoptive homes, to properly care for the more than 2,000 horses that have been removed since 2021.
The association is looking for land to create its own sanctuary, a new home for the mustangs that must leave Mesa Verde, where there is concern that the wild horses could damage not only the landscape but artifacts and ruins. The association wants a minimum of 10 acres near Cortez for a sanctuary, but ideally more like 50, Van Keuren said.
“My concern is that there is so little sanctuary space and capacity that the task of placing horses that are removed from home ranges is just really challenging,” she said. “What do you do with this supply of horses when they are being pulled off the ranges in these large numbers? Who can take care of them?
“Take the horses that are in this area and give them a place to roam and live.”
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