GJS: Judge sets aside BLM horse adoption incentive program

Judge sets aside BLM horse adoption incentive program

By DENNIS WEBB Dennis.Webb@gjsentinel.com, Mar 4, 2025 Updated Mar 5, 2025

A federal judge in Colorado has vacated a Bureau of Land Management program that pays people $1,000 to adopt an untrained wild horse or burro, ruling in a suit brought by advocates who say the program has led to some horses being sold for slaughter.

Senior U.S. District Judge William Martinez set aside the BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program. He found that the agency violated federal laws in creating it by failing to conduct environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act and to notify the public and seek comment under the Administrative Procedures Act.

Martinez remanded the matter back to the BLM, which could seek to revive the program while following the law consistent with his findings. The agency is declining comment on the ruling. It says on the main page of it its Wild Horse and Burro Program website that the adoption program is “currently paused and not available for new adopters. The BLM will provide additional information as soon as possible. Adopters who previously enrolled in the program will receive further guidance when available.”

The suit was brought by petitioners including the American Wild Horse Conservation, Skydog Sanctuary and Carol Walker, a Denver-based wild horse author and photographer.

Under the program, an adopter has been able to gain title to a horse or burro 12 months after adopting it, and then could receive up to $1,000 within 60 days.

An American Wild Horse Conservation investigation led to New York Times reporting in 2021 that some adopters collected the incentive money and then sent the animals to slaughter auctions. According to an E&E News story in 2022, the agency said it had no credible evidence of adopted animals ending up in foreign slaughterhouses.

In finding in his ruling that the petitioners had legal standing to pursue their claims in the case, Martinez wrote, “It is not hard to imagine — nor is it speculative for Petitioners to assert, based on the record evidence — that the slaughter of wild horses by third parties would be ‘fairly traceable’ to agency action that invites members of the public to obtain title to these untrained animals for a $1,000 cash incentive after only a year of care and supervision.”

“... Even BLM officials have acknowledged that the risk of these alleged abuses is possible as a result of (the program),” he said. This included an acknowledgment by the BLM that the “easy money aspect ... may bring out potential for fraud, abuse and neglect,” and that gentling “and training mustangs and burros adds monetary value to the animals and reduces the risk that they would be sold for slaughter.”

The BLM created the program to reduce its costs of caring for unadopted and untrained wild horses and burros as it seeks to deal with a large number of a wild horses and burros on public lands. It removes some animals from those lands to address overpopulation.

It implemented the incentive program through instructional memoranda issued in 2019 and 2022. The agency contends that those memoranda contain no binding language and thus weren’t subject to the Administrative Procedures Act notice and comment requirement. But Martinez found that the memoranda are indeed binding, and are effectively legislative rules subject to the notice and comment requirements, rather than being discretionary.

He wrote that “an agency cannot avoid its notice and comment obligations by simply clothing instruction memoranda in permissive language, only to then treat them in practice as mandatory.”

The BLM determined that the instructional memoranda were categorically excluded under the National Environmental Policy Act, meaning it didn’t have to prepare an environmental impact statement or environmental assessment on the program. But Martinez ruled that the memoranda were “substantive, and not merely administrative,” and a categorical exclusion wasn’t warranted.

Walker said in a news release, “Our wild horses deserve to be protected and treated humanely, not turned into a commodity for profit and abuse. This decision returns to the wild horses that have been removed from our public lands the protection that they deserve.”

Judy Cady is with the nonprofit group Friends of the Mustangs, which works with the BLM to support the local Little Book Cliffs wild horse herd and is making preparations for a June adoption event for some of the horses removed last year from that herd. She said Tuesday that that the cash incentive program wasn’t good for the horses because some adopters were abusing it.

“I know it caused some definite problems,” she said. “I’d rather they adopt the horse for the horse, not because somebody’s giving you a thousand bucks in a year.”

The program required BLM officials to conduct compliance checks within six months of the adoption date on untitled animals; required adopters to affirm in writing, subject to perjury, that they didn’t intend to sell or transfer an adopted animal for slaughter; and limited adopters to obtaining title to a maximum of four animals within 12 months.

The petitioners in the case say groups of related individuals were adopting the maximum allowed per person, then getting the titles, selling the animals to slaughter auctions and collecting tens of thousands of dollars.