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SALT LAKE CITY — The Bureau of Land Management is looking for partners willing to help the agency care for excess wild horses and burros by establishing ecosanctuaries.
The new program sprung from an initiative announced in 2009 by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who said the federal agency's Wild Horse and Burro program needed to be revamped to cut costs and improve efficiencies in the management of the nation's 35,500 wild horses and burros.
- An applicant must first obtain a Data Universal Number System number. Get one HERE.
- After receiving a DUNS number, the applicant may proceed to the Central Contractor Registration page and register. CLICK HERE to register.
- Completing this registration process can take up to two weeks, so applicants should work on their proposals while they are waiting for their registration confirmation.
A two-pronged approach under this program allows the establishment of ecosanctuaries solely on non-BLM managed private land or on land that is a combination of public and private land.
Agency officials say they anticipate ecosanctuaries hosted on private land will go through a proposal evaluation much more expediently and that such a facility could be ready, under signed agreements, by as early as late fall 2011.
Ecosanctuaries would host only non-producing herds of animals that are determined to be "excess" horses above the appropriate management levels for BLM herd areas. It's anticipated that some level of public visitation would be allowed and the agency will reimburse private ecosanctuary hosts per animal dependent upon proposal specifications.
The deadline to apply for consideration of the private-land only ecosanctuaries is May 15.
For those sanctuaries that could be co-located on a combination of federal, state, tribal and private lands, the process for reviewing those proposals will take longer because of potential land use restrictions that would have to be assessed.
The public-private partnership also requires the BLM to restrict these type of sanctuaries to inside of federally-designated herd areas. The deadline to apply is May 24.
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