Description
BACKGROUND: Wild horses and burros are American icons and living symbols of the historic pioneer spirit of the American West. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 provides the Secretary with the authority to enter into cooperative agreements with other organizations and agencies in order to appropriately manage and maintain healthy wild horse and burro populations on public lands. This responsibility falls on the Department of the Interiorâ¿¿s Bureau of Land Management (BLM). There are more than 1,200 wild horses ranging on Beaty Butte Heard Management Area (HMA) which is about 1,000 more than the BLM-determined maximum number of wild horses the land can support while also providing for other uses. To help protect the health and sustainability of the wild horse population, the BLM intends to support gathering the HMA down to the low end of the appropriate management level (AML) and is seeking a partner to assist with the yearly bait-trap gathering of horses to maintain AML and provide facilities and personnel to help train and better prepare wild horses removed from the HMA for adoption. This program will support the management of wild horses by keeping the HMA within AML without the use of large helicopter gathers and costly long-term holding. Recipients should be prepared to provide all necessary staff and expertise needed to operate and maintain a wild horse training program, to provide adequate facilities to properly and humanely handle, feed, and care for wild horses, to train wild horses to be ridden (saddle started - including outside riding, the ability to be roped off of, and the ability to be shoed and tolerate other hoof maintenance), to provide adoption opportunities and hold adoption events open to the public at their facility, and to provide for the disposal of deceased animals in accordance with applicable local, State, and Federal laws. The BLM intends to provide assistance and work closely with recipients in: Ground-based capture of wild horses, determining gather trap locations and access, trap monitoring, providing holding and training facilities, administering PZP (porcine zona pellucida) for fertility control, determining which horses should be removed for training and adoption, providing high quality training to captured horses, hosting and advertising adoption events, recruiting adopters, collecting BLM adoption fees, and in the transport of horses, as needed (horses not adopted will be returned to BLM possession). OBJECTIVES: The objective of this program is to successfully capture, treat with PZP (for fertility control), train, and adopt out excess wild horses from the BLM Beaty Butte Heard Management Area in order to maintain the heard management area (HMA) at the optimal appropriate management level (AML). PUBLIC BENEFIT: By maintaining the wild horse populations within their AML a thriving natural ecological balance is maintained improving maintenance of rangeland resources for multiple uses by the public. BLM financial assistance will help increase the number of adopted horses, reduce the number of horses in the HMA, reduce or remove the need for future large gathers, and ultimately reduce the overall cost to the public of managing the Beaty Butte HMA.