BEATY BUTTE WILD HORSE GATHER, FERTILITY CONTROL AND TRAINING PROGRAM

BLM Oregon featured wild horse and burro partnership

The Beaty Butte Herd Management Area is located 65 miles east of Lakeview, Oregon and encompasses more than 400,000 acres of BLM-managed and privately-owned land. The area contains the largest continuous tract of Sagebrush Focal Area-designated land in Oregon, which is the highest priority for maintaining greater sage-grouse habitat. To aid in the conservation and recovery of the greater sage-grouse, as well as to manage healthy wild horses on healthy public rangelands, the BLM's goal is to maintain the wild horse herd in the HMA at the appropriate management level of 100-250 animals.

To meet this goal, BLM Oregon took a holistic approach by partnering with the Beaty Butte Wild Horse Training Facility (a private, non-profit organization) to implement the Beaty Butte Wild Horse Gather, Fertility Control and Training Program. This program relies on the cooperation between the BLM and the Training Facility to manage herd growth in the HMA. This partnership is unique to the BLM in that it provides for private assistance to (1) train and adopt excess horses, (2) implement a fertility control program in the HMA, and (3) assist in bait-trap gathers. The overall aim is to reduce or eliminate the number of excess horses from this HMA that are never adopted and end up in BLM's off-range pastures at taxpayers' expense.

The agreement to establish this partnership was signed on September 2, 2016 and is valid for up to five years. After signing the agreement, the Beatys Butte Training Facility constructed a set of temporary corrals and have already begun training animals as construction continues on the permanent training facility, which will be completed by July 22.