BLM to Relocate Utah Mustangs from Utah Corrections Program

More than 1,000 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) mustangs will be relocated following a dispute between the federal agency and the Utah Department of Corrections. This decision comes after financial discrepancies were discovered in the program managed by Utah Correctional Industries (UCI), leading to the termination of the Wild Horse Inmate Program at Gunnison Prison.

As of 2014, the BLM manages about 40,815 horses and 8,394 burros roaming BLM-managed rangeland in 10 Western states. Another 15,779 horses and 195 burros are fed and cared for in short-term holding corrals. Meanwhile, 31,638 horses reside in long-term pastures. Some of the BLM-managed animals receive, by contract, feed and care from the inmates of states' penal systems.

Gus Warr, wild horse and burro specialist and manager of Utah's Wild Horse and Burro Program, said that in 2001 BLM-Utah entered into a cooperative agreement with Utah Correctional Industries (UCI), a division of the Utah Department of Corrections. Under that contract, inmates of Utah's Gunnison Prison would house and train the wild horses. In August 2014, 1,126 horses resided at the facility, Warr said. The cooperative agreement allowed the BLM to pay UCI on a per-horse, per-day basis. The agreement also included appropriate provisions and citations that restricted payment to UCI for only allowable costs.

“This was supposed to be a cooperative agreement; a break-even thing,” Warr said.

Under the BLM-Utah/UCI agreement, which ran through September 2012, UCI received total payments of more than $5.3 million, according to a written statement provided by the BLM. Due to accounting discrepancies for actual expenditures, the BLM asked the Department of the Interior's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an audit of the UCI program. In September 2013, that audit found more than $1 million in questionable costs and more than $900,000 in “unsupported costs” that represented expenditures for proper purposes but “without supporting documentation,” the written statement said.

From October 2013 to March 2014, BLM officials worked with UCI personnel to address the questionable and unsupported costs and to reduce them to $1,074,732, the BLM's written statement said. The statement said that UCI contended that the reimbursement agreement allowed the Utah corrections agency a “legitimate profit.”

In October 2012, BLM-Utah and UCI entered a new agreement. According to the BLM written statement, shortly thereafter UCI submitted a reimbursement request for hay costs totaling $1 million: “Following the issuance of the OIG report, UCI was placed on administrative review to be more closely monitored by the Grants Management Officer," the written statement said. "During the close monitoring of UCI reimbursement requests, the apparent double payment of $1 million in hay costs was discovered.”

“We estimate that the UCI owes the BLM about $2 million,” Warr said.

Warr said that BLM-Utah is seeking an independent, outside audit to confirm that figure.

Utah Department of Correction's Deputy Director of Administrative Services Mike Haddon was unavailable for comment on the BLM's statements.

On Sept. 5, Utah Department of Corrections announced that it would terminate its program at Gunnison Prison, Warr said.

Haddon was unavailable for comment.

Warr said the BLM would relocate the 1,226 horses living at the prison to facilities in Arizona, California, and Nevada.

A Sept. 5 written statement from the BLM read:

“The BLM's Utah State Office has valued our relationship with the Utah Department of Corrections (UDC) and regret that it has decided to terminate the Wild Horse Inmate Program (WHIP) at Gunnison. This program has aided in the rehabilitation of inmates and has, through the gentling of horses, helped place animals into good, private care. UDC's decision will complicate national efforts to make sure there is enough off-range holding capacity for wild horses and burros removed from public rangelands, and it will force BLM-Utah to place virtually all of the 1,126 Gunnison horses in facilities outside of Utah.”

The BLM expects to relocate the horses within 30 days, Warr said.

Originally Posted By The Horse