BLM Sets New Fee Policy For Adopt-A-Horse Program WASHINGTON - The nationwide federally sponsored Adopt-A-Horse Program, which finds homes for excess wild horses and burros removed from western public rangelands, will undergo a major change this fall to make the operation more self-sustaining, Robert Burford, Director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), announced today. Burford said that starting October 1, BLM will charge a fixed fee of $200 for a wild horse and $75 for a burro, with the money to be applied toward the actual cost of removing and placing animals with adopters. Transportation costs, if any, will be additional. Burford said that starting October 1, BLM will charge a fixed fee of $200 for a wild horse and $75 for a burro, with the money to be applied toward the actual cost of removing and placing animals with adopters. Transportation costs, if any, will be additional. "Increasing adoption fees for wild horses and burros is long overude," Burford said. "This year, BLM will spend $4.4 million subsidizing the Adopt-A-Horse Program. In a time of fiscal austerity, we consider this an inappropriate use of Federal funds." He added that the Office of Management and Budget and the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs in the past have urged BLM to make the adoption program more self-supporting. "While the fixed basic fee system is not the total solution, it is a step toward getting the program closer to paying for itself,"' Burford said. The new fees charged by BLM will also apply to excess horses and burros gathered from public lands administered by the Agriculture Depart ment's Forest Service and placed through BLM's Adopt-A-Horse Program. In isolated caes, where the Forest Service removes small numbers of animals for adoption locally, the fee will reflect the actual costs of capturing and placing the animals in adoption. Fees paid by adopters today range from $0 to $25 for a horse or burro picked up at a BLM corral in the West to $145 for a horse transported from Nevada to Tennessee for pickup at BLM's wild horse and burro adoption center in Cross Plains, one of four such centers across the country. The U.S. Government absorbs about $300 of the cost of capturing and placing each animal with an adopter. The practice of removing wild horses and burros from the public lands and placing them in the custody of qualified individuals began after passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act" of 1971. J Protected under the act J on lands administered by the Bureau of Land j Management and the Forest Service, horse and J burro populations in- j creased and removals of excess asnimals became j necessary. BLM placed the first i wild horses in 1973 when ! 23 excess horses were 1 ' removed from the Pryor ! ! Mountain Wild Horse J Range in Montana. The next year, BLM began an j adoption program in j ' Oregon, followed by Nevada in 1975. The adoption program was launched nationwide in Spring 1976. To date, more than 29,000 wild horses and burros have been placed with adopters in 48 states. Applications requesting more than 35,000 animals are currently on file with BLM. When announcing the new fee policy, Burford, said "further changes in the management of wild horses and burros are inevitable. Even though BLM has spent more than $27 million for their management since 1971, we have been unable to keep pace with their population growth. Range conditions in many herd i areas worsen year by ! year." j j Burford said, "If horses i and burros are allowed to destroy the range, they 1 destroy it for all. The wild horse and burro herds J suffer. Livestock suffers, as do bighorn sheep, ( ! antelope and the many j other forms of wildlife i : that inhabit the public j rangelands." J An estimated 70,000 wild horses and burros j roam the public rangelands in Arizona, J California, Colorado, J Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexitjo, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. Fifty-eight percent of the animals are on public ! lands in Nevada. According to BLM projections, 44,000 of the current estimated population fo 70,000 wild horses and burros must be removed from the public rangelands before an effective management , level is reached.