Horses, burros available for adoption in Angels Camp

Residents of the Sierra foothills and surrounding areas will have the opportunity to add a horse or burro to their families, when the Bureau of Land Management brings its Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program to the Calaveras County Fairgrounds, 101 Frogtown Road, Angels Camp, on Saturday, July 11.

The BLM will offer 30 horses, mostly yearlings, and three burros for public adoption. Halter-gentled horses, from yearlings to adult horses, will be included in the adoption. Anyone interested can preview the animals when they arrive at about 2 p.m. on Friday, July 10.

The event gates will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Adoptions begin with an hour of silent bidding at 9 a.m. Saturday. Animals not taken during bidding will be available for a $125 adoption fee.

"With summer days ahead, this is a good time to begin training an adopted mustang or burro," said Doug Satica, manager at BLM’s Litchfield wild horse and burro facility near Susanville. "Our horses and burros are certified to be healthy and they are ready to begin training."

The horses are from northeast California/northwest Nevada herd management areas. Burros (donkeys) came from Southern California deserts.

All available animals have received de-worming treatments and vaccinations for West Nile virus, rabies and common equine diseases. All have negative Coggins test results. Adopters receive complete health records for their animals so they can begin health care programs with their veterinarians.

To qualify, adopters must be at least 18 years old and have no convictions for inhumane treatment of animals. BLM staff members will interview all prospective adopters to be sure they meet the BLM adoption requirements.

Newly adopted horses and burros must be kept in corrals with at least 400 square feet of space per animal (20 feet by 20 feet), surrounded by a fence built of pipe or boards. The corral enclosure must be six feet high for adult horses.

Horses under 18 months old can be kept in corrals with five-foot fences, and four-and-a-half-foot fences are allowed for burros. Adopters must provide a two-sided, roofed shelter to provide protection from extreme weather.

"Adopted animals should be kept in this corral until they can be approached, handled, haltered and led," Williams explained. "Non-gentled animals should not be placed in large, open pastures."

At the adoption event, Adopters must provide a halter and lead rope. BLM wranglers will halter and load adopted animals. Adult horses must be transported in stock trailers with side-swinging gates.

Title to adopted wild horses and burros remains with the federal government for one year. After providing a year of good care, adopters can receive title. The BLM or a representative will check on the condition of the animal during the adoption period.

"Wild horses are strong, loyal, intelligent and very trainable," Williams said. "Adopters love their horses for pleasure riding and trail riding, back country packing, ranch work and competition. People train their burros for back country packing, pulling carts, and riding."

Wild horses and burros are protected by a federal law, the Wild and Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The law recognizes the animals as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the west," and requires the BLM to manage the wild herds.

The BLM periodically gathers horses and burros to control herd populations on ranges shared with wildlife and domestic livestock. Herd sizes are controlled to ensure there is sufficient feed and water for all range users and to ensure that natural resources are not over-used.

There are about 29,500 wild horses and burros roaming on public rangelands in the western states. More than 220,000 animals have been placed in private care since the BLM’s Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro Program began in the early 1970s.

For additional information on the adoption event or wild horse management, contact the BLM toll free at 1-866-4MUSTANGS or the Litchfield Corrals at (530) 254-6575. Information is also available online at http://www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov.

Don't get me started on the BLM and their "horse management".

Colorado Springs, CO (July 7, 2008) – Claiming that they have a budget crisis the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the government agency charged with protecting wild horses, announced plans to consider euthanizing some or all of the 33,000 wild horses they have rounded up and confined in holding facilities.

The Cloud Foundation, dedicated to preserving wild horses on public lands including the Pryor Mountain herd in Montana, was horrified to learn that BLM would turn to killing wild horses to balance their budget. “BLM has taken away their freedom and their families,” stated Ginger Kathrens, Emmy award-winning filmmaker and volunteer Executive Director of The Cloud Foundation, “Now they want to kill them to avoid a budget shortfall? These are not injured, sick or starving horses, but healthy wild horses removed from their homes by the thousands.”

Since 2000, BLM has conducted massive round ups, removing over 75,000 horses from the range, driving the wild mustang population to the brink of extinction. Currently, there are few wild horse herds large enough to maintain their long-term viability. “The Pryors is the next case in point,” said Ms. Kathrens. “BLM is proposing the removal of all but 90 animals, a level that will jeopardize the horses’ long-term health and viability. Even though the Pryor herd traces directly back to the horses of the Conquistadors, they have targeted them for removal. Older horses on the Pryors would likely go into long term holding where they could face a death sentence if BLM proceeds with their plans.” Even the famous Pryor stallion, Cloud, falls within the so-called “older” horse category at 13 years of age.

BLM’s drastic removals have swamped their own Adoption Program which has, in the best of years, placed 5,000 wild horses with private
owners. As a solution to the growing backlog of unadopted wild horses the BLM came up with a long term holding program in which wild horses would be cared for until death. That death could now come from a bullet, rather than from natural causes. BLM refers to this as Euthanasia

Euthanasia as a management tool was included in The Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971, the legislation passed by Congress to stop the mass killing and exploitation of the mustangs. But, according to Hope Ryden, one of the individuals who helped draft the Act, Euthanasia was never meant to be used in the way BLM is planning.

“On the contrary, the document’s authors first consideration was for those (wild horses) in the wild that suffered broken legs, paralysis, or were too sick to graze”, Ryden states. “These wild horses, it was determined, must be helped to die quickly and humanely. That the BLM now seeks to do this to healthy, captive wild horses, reflects on the Bureau’s woeful mismanagement of the wild horse program and their real indifference to horse suffering.”

Reacting in years past to BLM requests for “kill authority” Congress placed protective language in each Appropriations Bill, specifically denying BLM the right to massively kill off the wild horses.

Then, in late 2006, U.S. Senator Conrad Burns of Montana slipped a rider into the Appropriations Bill which took the protective wording out. Reacting to this news, the U.S. House of Representatives quickly passed a bill, HR 249, which would have reinstated the protections in the Wild Horse and Burro Act. This bill stalled in the Senate in 2007 and has yet to be passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, (D) New Mexico.

In the meantime, BLM will decide whether to begin killing the public’s horses in September. They invite calls from the public at 1-800-710-7597 as well as emails ([email protected]) about this issue.

The Cloud Foundation strongly urges the public to call the toll free number and email BLM as well as their congressional representatives. “The public has every right to be outraged by this cruel and unnecessary plan,” Kathrens said. “And the solution is so simple. Release the thousands of incarcerated mustangs back into their home on the range. There is no over population. On the contrary, there are too few wild horses at present to guarantee they will roam free into the future.”

Over the past 35 years BLM has eliminated all wild horses from over 100 legally designated herd areas in ten western states on nearly 20 million acres of our public lands.


For more information:
Ginger Kathrens (719) 633-38425