Utah ends prison horse program

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah prison officials said Friday the federal government has 30 days to relocate 1,100 wild horses after the state ended a program in which inmates cared for the animals.

The Utah Department of Corrections announced it was ending the program it has run with the Bureau of Land Management at the Gunnison prison since 2007.

The BLM and state corrections officials are in a financial dispute over the program.

The BLM said in a statement that the agency regrets the program is ending. The bureau said the move will make it difficult to find places to house the 1,126 animals.

Some horses will stay in Utah and the majority will be shipped to Nevada, Arizona and California, BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said.

Inmates in the program cared for horses and prepared about 50 wild mustangs for adoption each year.

Deniz Bolbol, a spokeswoman for the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, said the news is one more example of the need for the BLM to stop removing wild horses from public rangeland.

Instead, Bolbol said the bureau should follow recommendations by an independent panel of the National Academy of Sciences, such as spending money on fertility control rather than housing.