Horses and Burros Enter New Program

Pueblo Chieftain
CANON CITY - Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Thursday proposed a national solution to restore the health of America’s wild horse herds and the public rangelands that support them.

The new program will not affect the program in Canon City where inmates train wild horses for adoption.

A total of 65 inmates, working at the East Canon Prison Complex for Colorado Correctional Industries, care for 3,000 of the nation's 32,000 wild horses and burros which are being held in captivity at various facilities. Many of the horses held in Canon City are trained and adopted by the public, or used in programs such as one at U.S. Border Patrol stations, which have adopted 31 mustangs during the past two years.

"The recent economic downturn has seen public demand to adopt wild horses decline sharply," said Bob Abbey, director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "There is a high cost to hold these horses and humanely feed them in off-range holding facilities."

Another 37,000 horses and burros continue to roam the desert rangelands of 10 Western states - mostly in Nevada and Arizona - where drought has made for a shortage of both water and forage to sustain the wild herds. "Frankly these horses are in very bad condition," Salazar said. "We have outlined a new program we believe will better protect wild horses which are a symbol of our nation and better manage the public lands they roam where out-of-control populations have grown over time, from 25,000 in 1971 to 69,000 today."