Recipient Organization
TUFTS UNIVERSITY
200 WESTBORO ROAD
N. GRAFTON,MA 01536
Performing Department
Infectious Disease and Global Health
Non Technical Summary
Impact on Unwanted Horses: More than 35,000 wild horses living in Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) holding facilities are a significant subset of the unwanted horse population. About 2,000 of these horses are housed in Canon City, CO. In addition to costing taxpayers $36.9 million in FY2010, some humane organizations and animal advocates argue that keeping the horses in such facilities is inhumane. Although many adoptions are successful, anecdotal evidence indicates many are not, resulting in wild horses being relinquished - untrained and unmanageable - and especially vulnerable to neglect and abuse. Data from our proposed study will have important implications for the welfare of wild horses and the future of the BLM adoption program. Although our project will not directly reduce the number of unwanted horses, our data will have the potential overtime to substantially impact the unwanted horse population nationwide. For example, it will help increase the number of successful adoptions and decrease the number of wild horses in BLM holding facilities that are designated as "unwanted" by: a) informing BLM regional marketing of the adoption program, with regard to generating interest in and promoting the use of wild horses; b) assisting the BLM and wild horse interest groups to better prepare and educate potential adopters about wild horses; c) informing BLM regionally-specific policies and practices with regard to adopter preferences and essential post adoption support; d) assisting state and other equine welfare organizations to develop educational and training programs specific to the unique needs of adopters and their horses. Overall, the proposed project represents important research that will increase our understanding of factors and best practices that lead to successful BLM wild horse adoptions, an area of study that has gone largely unexplored. Given the Colorado Unwanted Horse Alliance's (CUHA) commitment to scientific research to improve the welfare of horses, and Colorado's key involvement in the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program, we are very excited about the possibility of working through the CUHA on this project. This project will not only help wild horses but also serve as a model for the valuable collaboration that can take place between individual state equine organizations and independent research institutions to address a growing national concern - the adoption of BLM wild horses.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
40%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
Since the establishment of the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Adopt a Wild Horse or Burro Program in 1971, approximately 190,000 wild horses have been adopted by the public. However, beginning in 2000, the number of adoptions has not kept pace with the rate of removal. As a result, about 35,000 wild horses have ended up in BLM short- and long-term holding facilities, waiting to be adopted. The Unwanted Horse Coalition counts these horses as a significant proportion of the unwanted horse population. Some 2,000 horses are housed in Canon City, CO, the location of the BLM's largest wild horse and burro holding facility and one of five Wild Horse Inmate Programs (WHIP). Since its creation in the mid 1980s, the WHIP in Canon City has adopted out more than 5,000 gentled and trained horses or burros. In recent years, both the United States Government Accountability Office and the proposed Restore Our American Mustang Act have made recommendations to the BLM for considerable changes in its adoption program to decrease the number of horses in holding facilities. Unfortunately, there is almost no research exploring the transition of wild horses to companion horses, and effective initiatives cannot be developed and implemented without more information about the factors that support or impede successful wild horse adoption. Our study will fill that gap. Our 2009 study on wild horse adoption in New England, funded by the Animal Welfare Trust, provided descriptive data on the adopters and their horses as well as important insights into the factors that contributed to successful adoptions and recommendations for improving adoption practices and policies. However, because we solicited participants for that study after they had significant experience with adoption, we had little success recruiting participants whose adoptions had proved unsuccessful. This limited the generalizability of the results with regard to improving policy. This project is a prospective study that will focus on adopters' experiences during their first year, a time that we believe is crucial in determining the success of an adoption. Our objectives for this proposed study are: (1) identify factors during the first adoption year that contribute to successful or unsuccessful adoption; (2) determine if there are regional differences in wild horse adopters, the type of horses they adopt, and their adoption experience, including the need for and availability of education and training programs; (3) inform the creation and implementation of a future longitudinal study on wild horse adoption and regional wild horse conferences hosted by the Center for Animal and Public Policy and other interested equine welfare organizations. In addition to sharing the results of this study with the BLM, we will provide a state by state breakdown of the data to interested equine organizations.
Project Methods
Our sample will be comprised of 70-80 participants who have adopted wild horses directly from the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) in 2012 and who live in two different geographic regions (45-50 from the Southwest and 25-30 from the Northeast). Selecting the Southwest and the Northeast as sites is based on conversations with BLM staff who strongly suggested that adopters would have regionally-specific interests and concerns. The Southwest has the largest number of adoptions regionally while the Northeast is most geographically accessible and is the location of our past research. Recruiting 45-50 participants from the Southwest and 25-30 participants from the Northeast is based on the numbers of adoptions in the regions - about 650 per year in the Southwest and 70 per year in the Northeast. This requires that we recruit a higher percentage of adopters in the Northeast where our existing contacts are strongest, but is a reasonable estimate based on the average annual number of adoptions in each region. The states with the highest rates of adoption in the Southwest are Colorado, Texas, and Arizona. Because most adoptions in this region occur through satellite adoptions, prison training programs, and Extreme Mustang Makeovers, we will recruit participants at these state events. Because most adoptions in the Northeast occur through satellite adoption fairs, we will recruit participants at the two adoption fairs in this region, as well as at an Extreme Mustang Makeover. Our primary means of recruitment will be direct interaction with adopters at these events and will be augmented by responses to posters advertising the study that the BLM has agreed to place in the adoption application packages. To help retain participants, we will send reminder letters before the six-month and final interviews. Survey Instrument and Protocol: We will conduct 3 in-depth interviews with the adopters. The initial interview will collect basic descriptive information on adopters (e.g., age, income, education) and their horses (e.g. gender, color, age) as well as their reasons for adopting a wild horse and their plans for him/her (e.g., trail riding, dressage) at the beginning of the adoption year. The second and third interviews will gather information about the adopters' experience with their wild horse in the first and last six months of the adoption year. For adopters who no longer have their wild horses, the survey will include different questions that seek to understand why the horses were relinquished. Our research on New England wild horse adopters and discussions with BLM staff informed the design of the survey instrument, which will include multiple choice, open-ended, and Likert scale questions. For the first interview, our goal is to meet face-to-face with as many participants as possible. We will conduct the second and third interviews by telephone. To analyze the qualitative data, we will review the responses, code them, and organize them into themes to generate a narrative about the participants' experiences with adoption. To analyze the quantitative data, we will use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.