Wild horses huddle at Oliver Ranch, which is within the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Of the 8,200 wild horses eligible for sale through a special fund, roughly half were rounded up from Nevada rangelands. Photo by John Gurzinski.

WASHINGTON -- The Ford Motor Co. has raised more than $200,000 for use by animal rescue groups willing to help place older wild horses in protective long-term care, the Bureau of Land Management announced Tuesday.

The Mustang sports car manufacturer raised the money through a fund launched in May to shield federally owned animals from possible slaughter.

Ford spokeswoman Marisa Bradley said "a large portion" of the $200,000 came from the company, but she declined to disclose how much.

More than 350 private donors contributed to the fund through a Web site, www.savethemustangs.org, and the program will remain open for more donations, Bradley said.

Ford joined with the BLM, which manages the nation's wild horses and burros, and Take Pride in America, a program established by the U.S. Department of the Interior to foster volunteerism on public lands, which will administer the fund.

The BLM this week sent letters to more than 300 wild- horse and rescue groups urging them to apply for grants.

A group that buys a wild horse from the BLM for $10 will receive $100 from the fund to care for the horse. To qualify, groups must show they will provide for the animals' long-term care and verify their nonprofit status.

Of the 8,200 horses eligible for sale through the fund, roughly half were gathered from Nevada rangelands, BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said.

Federal law requires the BLM to sell animals that are older than 10 and have been passed over for adoption at least three times.

The horses are among about 26,000 other wild horses and burros kept at holding facilities run by the BLM, which rounds up the animals to control their population growth.

The amount is not enough to cover the costs involved in caring for the animals, but it is an incentive, Gorey said.

But one activist criticized the BLM and said the agency was shirking responsibility for caring for the wild horses.

"We have to make the BLM somehow realize that their mandate is to care and protect the wild horse," said Chris Heyde, deputy legislative director for the Society for Animal Protective Legislation, a division of the Animal Welfare Institute.

"Our point is that you are responsible for them," he said, referring to the BLM. "You have removed them from land where they should be. These horses should be placed back on the public lands."

Heyde said his group would not apply for the funding.

"We certainly haven't wanted to facilitate bad behavior," he said.

The program could be a "good incentive" for American Indian tribes to buy and provide for the horses, said Karen Sussman, president of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Wild Burros.

"We have a potential of 200 horses going to a tribe, and they could get $20,000 to keep them on their land," said Sussman, whose group works with tribes to preserve wild horses.

"This is a step in the right direction, but until we stop horse slaughter altogether, we will have to worry about every horse that is sold even under this type of program," said Nancy Perry, vice president of government affairs for The Humane Society of the United States.

The fund was established after the April 2005 slaughter of 41 wild horses whose owners resold or traded them after buying them from the BLM.

The agency began selling wild horses in March 2005 to follow a law enacted in December 2004.

The agency suspended the wild horse sales program between April and May last year to make changes aimed at preventing such slaughter.