Assistance program
Wild Horse and Burro Resource Management
$38.8 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Bureau of Land Management, Interior, Department of the
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements (Discretionary Grants)
- CFDA number
- 15.229
- What it does
- The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages and protects wild horses and burros on 26.9 million acres of public lands across ten western states as part of its mission to administer public lands for multiple uses. The Wild Horse and Burro Program's goal is to manage healthy wild horses and burros on healthy public rangelands. The BLM created the Wild Horse and Burro Program to implement the Wild-Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act, passed by Congress in 1971. Broadly, the law declares wild horses and burros to be “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West†and stipulates that the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service have the responsibility to manage and protect herds in their respective jurisdictions within areas where wild horses and burros were found roaming in 1971. The Wild Horse and Burro Program consists of two main branches: (1) On-Range management of wild horses and burros, and (2) Off-Range management and care of wild horses and burros. The goal of the On-Range program is to manage for healthy wild horse and burro populations and to maintain a thriving natural ecological balance with other resources and land uses. The Off-Range management goal is to ensure the health and welfare of wild horses and burros that were removed from public lands under BLM care, to place animals into private care through adoptions, sales, and transfers, to conduct compliance inspections of adopted animals and to build partnerships and relationships with external organizations. Communications, outreach, and education are priorities of both branches. This program continues to advance the Department of Interior's priorities to restore balance on public lands and waters.
- Who benefits
- All Public Land users.
- Who applies
- .
- Authorized by
- Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971,16 USC 1336, Public Law 92-195, as amended; Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Public Law 94-579, 43 USC 1737 (b); Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978,43 USC 1906, Public Law 95-514, Section 9 Section 1906.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Direct payments
$120.8K
<1%
Grants
$38.7M
100%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments