With a lineage on the North American mainland dating to Spanish explorers in 1519, the horse has allowed humankind to explore the continent, manage vast ranches and wrangle herds of cattle across the West.

Fast forward half a millennia and recent statistics, compiled by the U.S. Department of the Interior, suggest that the number of feral horse and burro populations is increasing at an alarming rate.

When the Wild Horse and Burro Act was passed in 1971, the Bureau of Land Management became the federal agency responsible for managing approximately 25,000 wild horses and burros living on public land across the West. Since then, and after four amendments to the law from 1976-2005, the number of wild horses continues to increase.

In 2015, the number of wild horses and burros on public lands reached more than 58,000; of these 16,330 were in BLM holding facilities throughout the U.S., 30,614 were in long-term holding pastures and 534 were in eco-sanctuaries.

In Utah, the Delta Wild Horse and Burro Facility functions as a preparation center for wild horses and burros gathered throughout the state. It also is used as an overflow facility for wild horses and burros from the National Wild Horse and Burro Program.

The facility was built in 1976 as the primary holding facility for wild horses and burros gathered in Utah and as an overnight stop for animals being shipped to facilities in the east.

By 2002, the BLM purchased four adjoining acres to the facility, and in 2003, Delta expanded its holding capacity from 100 to 300.

As part of its wild horse and burro program, the BLM will host a first-come, first-served adoption event from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, July 21, and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, July 22, at the Delta facility located at 600 N. 350 West. For more information call 435-864-4068 or email [email protected].

Additional adoption events are scheduled for Aug. 18-19 and Sept. 15-16.

To encourage more adopters to give a wild horse or burro a good home, the adoption incentive program provides up to $1,000 to adopt an untrained wild horse or burro.

The goal of the program is to reduce BLM’s recurring costs to care for unadopted and untrained wild horses and burros while helping to enable the agency to confront a growing overpopulation on fragile public rangeland.

The adoption incentive program allows qualified adopters to receive as much as $1,000, up to 60 days after the title date of their animal. The incentive is available for all untrained animals that are eligible for adoption, including animals at BLM facilities, off-site events and on the agency’s online corral.

Additionally, to ensure adopted animals go to good homes, the BLM limits adopters to assuming title to a maximum of four animals within a 12-month period and does not allow the transfer of title for at least 12 months from the adoption date. During the adoption period, the BLM conducts compliance inspections on animals while in private care prior to title transfer.

A $125 fee applies at the time of adoption.

Wild Horse advocacy groups say they feel angst over the practice of forcibly removing the animals from public land only to house them in holding facilities for the rest of their lives or schedule them for adoption events to make herd management someone else’s responsibility.

“The mandate of the federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act must be carried out,” said Dr. Joanna Grossman, equine program director and senior policy adviser at the Animal Welfare Institute.

“Wild horses need less intervention by the BLM and more freedom to roam their legal and traditional ranges,” Grossman added. “Adoption demand cannot possibly keep pace with the BLM’s drastic removals. This misguided policy has resulted in more animals being held in confinement than ever before. The solution is clear: The BLM should implement proven and safe fertility control options.”

During the past 50 years, more than 230,000 wild horses and burros have been adopted and removed from the range.

“The reality is this is where we are,” DeMayo said. “For more than 20 years Return to Freedom has supported the use of fertility control so that horses can be managed on the range instead of excessive roundups that the BLM conducts to remove wild horses from the land.”

DeMayo acknowledges that BLM isn’t the evil empire, but their lack of staff is a major hindrance to change.

“I am always optimistic because otherwise, I would probably have given up a long time ago,” DeMayo said. “I see a lot of positive movement in some areas, in some people and within some governmental agencies. The conversation is changing, but the actual implementation of higher standards of herd management just doesn’t seem to happen within the Bureau of Land Management. There is a lot of inertia happening and it’s very frustrating.”

For decades, land management agencies have endured an increasingly difficult challenge of how to control the growth of wild horse and burro populations across the West. As a result, the BLM, as part of its management of public rangeland, gathers and removes thousands of animals each year off of federal land to control herd sizes.

According to the BLM, wild horses and burros have virtually no natural predators and their herd sizes can double about every four years.

Additionally, the latest government data reveals that an estimated 64,604 wild horses and 17,780 wild burros occupy 42 million acres of federally managed rangeland across 10 Western states. In Utah, the BLM manages 19 wild horse and burro herd management areas on nearly 2.4 million acres.

The data shows the second year in a row of population decreases. A comparable two-year decline hasn’t occurred in over 15 years. However, the 2022 estimate remains three times the BLM’s goal of approximately 27,000 animals.

As of 2021, government corrals and leased pastures were maxed out at more than 47,000 wild horses and burros with taxpayers picking up the tab of about $50,000 per head over the course of the animal’s lifetime.