BLM aims to tame cost of caring for wild horses To protect Utah rangelands from overgrazing, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management removes 300 to 400 wild horses and burros a year, but it is able to adopt out only 250 of them. The agency will not destroy the rest for fear of public outcry — so it cares for escalating numbers of them in captivity. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said Monday such practices throughout the West have reached a crisis point, where BLM officials now manage "almost the same number of animals off the range as they do in the wild." It says the agency must either destroy or sell for slaughter thousands of the horses in captivity — or run out of money to care for horses in the wild, where neglect could increase horse deaths from effects of drought or starvation. "BLM decided not to destroy excess unadoptable animals (beginning in 1982) ... because of public dismay," when it killed 47 horses the previous year, said the GAO, a research arm of Congress. Because of that, the BLM now cares for just over 30,000 wild horses and burros in captivity. The GAO said the BLM manages about 33,100 horses and burros in the wild in the West — or just a bit more than it now has in captivity....