The federal government is offering up to $1,000 to people who adopt untrained equines.
The Bureau of Land Management promoted its Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Incentive Program with a tweet on Monday.
“The goal of the program is to reduce BLM’s recurring costs to care for unadopted and untrained wild horses and burros while helping to enable the BLM to confront a growing over-population of wild horses and burros on fragile public rangelands,” the agency said in a statement.
Late last year, federal officials in Northern California began rounding up 1,000 wild horses to be put up for sale and adoption. The U.S. Forest Service said the Devil’s Garden Plateau near the Oregon border had exceeded the limit for how many horses it could hold.
The agency built a new corral northwest of Reno, paving the way for the death of wild horses sold for as little as $1 each to buyers who might send them to slaughterhouses.
Under the BLM’s program, those who adopt a wild horse or burro will be eligible to receive $500 within two months for the adoption and another $500 within the same time period for the titling of the animal.
A $25 fee will be applied at the time of the adoption, BLM said.
Those interested in Southern California can visit BLM’s online database or contact the Sundance Ranch in Redlands or the Ridgecrest Regional Wild Horse and Burro Corrals in Kern County.
The Back Country Horsemen of California Rendezvous will hold an adoption and sale event in Norco on March 30 and 31.