The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is soliciting bids for new, publicly accessible pasture facilities located in the continental United States that provide a free-roaming environment for wild horses and burros. The solicitation is for one or more long-term pasture facilities accommodating 400 to 2,000 wild horses. Each pasture facility must be able to provide humane care for a one-year period, with a renewal option under BLM contract for nine one-year extensions. The BLM may require one or two public and/or media tours hosted by BLM staff and the contractor during the life of the contract. The solicitation is open until April 10, 2012, and is 100 percent set aside for small businesses under the North American Industry Classification System.
The BLM manages wild horses and burros as part of its overall multiple-use mission. Under the authority of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the BLM manages and protects these living symbols of the Western spirit while ensuring that population levels are in balance with other public rangeland resources and uses.
To make sure that healthy herds thrive on healthy rangelands, the BLM must remove thousands of animals from the range each year to control the size of herds, which have virtually no predators and can double in population every four years. The current free-roaming population of BLM-managed wild horses and burros is 38,500, which exceeds by nearly 12,000 the number determined by the BLM to be the appropriate management level. Off the range, there are more than 45,000 wild horses and burros cared for in either short-term corrals or long-term pastures. All these animals, whether on or off the range, are protected by the BLM under the 1971 law.
Further Reading
Wild horses arrive at Madeleine Pickens’ eco-Sanctuary
BLM announces reforms to wild horse and burro program
Interestin
I think they need to find a more permanent solution as for what to do with all those mustangs. They already have more than there are roaming free, and that number is going to keep going up.
Hmmm….
Long live the American mustang. Hopeful there will be a good solution for the symbol of true freedom.
What’s wrong with using the 245 million acres that we ,the citizens of the U.S. , already own? I know that this will be to the benefit of the cattle ranchers! How stupid do they think U.S. citizens are? Why won’t they let Madeleine Pickens take the mustangs? The BLM’s lame-ass excuses just aren’t cutting it! Allowing these horses to go to private ranches just endangers them even more. How do we (U.S. citizens) know what happens to them then? I truly believe that the BLM has already been selling America’s mustngs to crooks that have sold them to slaughter! I work for a State government, I KNOW how crooked they can be! They just hope that nobody notices and/or gives a crap to do anything about! They prey on complacency!
The BLM is run for the good of cattle ranchers and nothing else. And everyone knows that most cattle ranchers hate the wild horses because they take money out of their pockets. With 2 to 3 million head of cattle sharing range with less then 20,000 wild horses why is it that the horses must be removed costing taxpayers millions? Why do privately owned cattle get to graze on public lands while we American taxpayers pay to remove and care for the wild horses? There is something seriously wrong with this picture. Remove the cattle and let the wild horses roam all the range they were given by law, by the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 1971. The horses and burros are protected by law but the BLM doesn’t obey the law; they twist the rules to help their friends the cattle ranchers. This has got to stop.
The BLM needs to return the 22.2 million acres to our wild horses and burros and put the ones in holding back on them. Special interests, mining, ranchers, fracking and “green energ” are taking over OUR public lands. 85% of the herds are no longer genetically viable and sustainable and over 100 HMA/HA’s have ben zeroed out. Bulldozers are clearing land in the desert for solar panels when they should be put on roof tops. Congress is doing nothing to stop the DOI/BLM.
There are NOT 38,000 wild horses still roaming free !!! Visit BLM’s approximate numbers from last year at http://tinyurl.com/4evvefn. With more removals since then there are probably less than 18,000 now still free in all the West. Mares are being guiven PZP to prevent births so IMO this native species is being wiped out.Get the book for $2 from Animal Welfare Institute , “Managing for Extinction”.
It’s obvious from some answers that you easterners don’t have a clue about the “wild horse” issue. Horses are not native to our land. They will keep breeding until they denude the range then starve because there isn’t any population control. I spent 23 years on the range seeing horse overpopulate the range to the point of mass starvation. Federal law won’t allow us to kill them humanely so we have too many horses to take care of. Setting aside more range will only exacerbate the problem with a higher cost to the taxpayer. Cattle ranchers manage their herds while the Gov’t doesn’t because the Wild Horse Protection Act prohibits killing them.
Richard from Wolfeboro…I couldn’t agree with you more. Lyn from Chicago…There is hardly ever an instance where the BLM is the cattle rancher’s friend. The BLM charges the ranchers for using the land to graze cattle on. Granted, the ranchers don’t get charged very much per acre (especially in NV because there isn’t a whole lot for the cows to eat out there) but that doesn’t mean the BLM is their friend. The BLM and the entire Dept. of the Interior (DOI) is an unconstitutional government entity anyway and should be shut down, with the public lands reverting back to the individual states as the Constitution requires. Read Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution folks. It states in there that the Feds are only allowed to own land within the states IF they buy it from the state with the state legislature’s approval…and even then they are only allowed to use the land for specific purposes, i.e. “for the erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful buildings;” I don’t see anything in there that allows the DOI to control millions of acres for anything, including housing wild horses. By the way, I grew up in NV, worked on cattle ranches, and even adopted one of the wild horses several years ago. In other words, I’m not just getting my information from a magazine, website, or television show. I’ve lived it.
My mother lived to be 95 and then died in 2008. She always said that her favorite experience in her entire lifetime was when we saw the wild horses running in the Red Desert of Wyoming, near the Oregon Buttes. There was a mirage that day and the horses appeared to be running on water. My mother had a hard life and I remember that day as something miraculous. I feel I must add this thought: It troubles me to have anything I love “protected” by the Federal Government, since that “protection” tends to destroy those things, like The Constitution and my Country and my liberty. I would prefer to have the horses protected by private organizations and individuals.
Let ’em Run!