For decades, the Bureau of Land Management has wrestled with a vexing problem: how to responsibly manage the tens of thousands of wild horses and burros roaming public lands across the American West. With few natural predators and virtually no population control, these animals have multiplied far beyond the landscape’s carrying capacity — leading to degraded rangeland wildlife habitat, brutal horse starvations and mounting taxpayer costs.
Unfortunately, a recent federal court decision has derailed a program that was helping alleviate this crisis and save taxpayers money — the Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Incentive Program.
Earlier this year, the U.S. District Court of Colorado ruled that when the agency created the program, it did not sufficiently review its environmental impacts. The decision may have been rooted in procedural law, but its real-world consequences are clear: fewer adoptions, overcrowded holding facilities, more animals suffering on the range and more taxpayer dollars spent without a path toward sustainable management.
The adoption incentive offered $1,000 for private citizens to adopt untrained wild horses and burros, moving them from temporary BLM holding facilities into permanent loving homes. For many would-be adopters, this one-time payment helped them overcome a financial hurdle and provide these horses a new lease on life. Since its launch in 2019, the incentive program has helped place more than 15,000 animals into private homes and ranches — helping double the total number of animals adopted in the previous five years combined — and will save taxpayers approximately $400 million over the lifetime of the adopted animals.
Without the program, the agency will continue to remove excess horses and burros from overcrowded rangelands, but it will now do so with one fewer tool in its toolkit. The bureau still has the burden of caring for roughly 62,000 animals in its off-range holding facilities, costing taxpayers roughly $100 million per year. That’s in addition to the ever-present challenge of managing over 73,000 horses and burros on public rangelands — nearly three times the land’s sustainable carrying capacity.
Opponents of the program have claimed that some adopters may have sold their horses to slaughterhouses after receiving their $1,000 incentive payment. However, these allegations have not verified, nor has the BLM been able to substantiate any of these claims after investigating the issue.
Likewise, to increase safeguards, the bureau implemented a new payment structure several years ago in which the adopter receives half of the incentive payment initially and the other half plus title transfer one year later, once the new owner passes an animal welfare check completed by a veterinarian or BLM-authorized officer.
The alternative to adoption isn’t some idealized version of wild horses living freely on healthy rangelands. It’s overcrowded herds, degraded landscapes and ballooning costs with no off-ramp in sight. We should ask ourselves: What’s the more humane, more responsible path forward?
The Adoption Incentive Program is a rare example of a public policy that leverages incentives to address a thorny land management problem. It reduced the strain on rangelands and cut down the number of animals in long-term government holding — all while giving thousands of horses and burros a better life. The BLM should take the steps necessary to address the court’s concerns and reinstate the program as soon as possible.
Let’s not let a promising solution wither in procedural bureaucracy. The horses — and our landscapes — deserve better.
Tate Watkins is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center and co-author of a new report, 10 Ideas for the Interior Department.
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