© 2024 Wyoming Public Media
800-729-5897 | 307-766-4240
Wyoming Public Media is a service of the University of Wyoming
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Transmission & Streaming Disruptions
A regional collaboration of public media stations that serve the Rocky Mountain States of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

BLM Will Pay You $1,000 To Adopt A Wild Horse

The BLM says there are more than 80,000 wild horses and burros across the West.
James Marvin Phelps
/
Flickr Creative Commons
The BLM says there are more than 80,000 wild horses and burros across the West.

The Bureau of Land Management is offering people $1,000 if they’ll adopt a wild horse. 

The agency says more than 80,000 wild horses and burros are on rangelands across the West right now. The animals can damage rangeland and when their populations are high some of them starve.   

 Press PLAY to hear the audio version of this story

The BLM captures the animals and keeps them in corrals, but some of the less feral onesget adopted out. Debbie Collins is a wild horse and burro national outreach specialist with BLM. She says the animals' numbers are up, but adoptions are down. Most corrals are at capacity of about 6,000.

"So what’s happened is our numbers on the range have increased even more, so we’re at nearly 82,000 animals on our public lands," says Collins. 

That’s far too many, she says. The $1,000 incentive aims at getting more people to adopt so the BLM will be able to capture and corral more from the landscape. 

On average, each corralled horse costs the BLM about $2,000 in food, veterinary care and other stabling costs every year. 

Find reporter Amanda Peacher on Twitter @amandapeacher.

Copyright 2019 Boise State Public Radio

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho,  KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.

Copyright 2021 Boise State Public Radio News. To see more, visit Boise State Public Radio News.

Amanda Peacher is an Arthur F. Burns fellow reporting and producing in Berlin in 2013. Amanda is from Portland, Oregon, where she works as the public insight journalist for Oregon Public Broadcasting. She produces radio and online stories, data visualizations, multimedia projects, and facilitates community engagement opportunities for OPB's newsroom.
Amanda Peacher
Amanda Peacher works for the Mountain West News Bureau out of Boise State Public Radio. She's an Idaho native who returned home after a decade of living and reporting in Oregon. She's an award-winning reporter with a background in community engagement and investigative journalism.
Related Content