When the U.S. Bureau of Land Management put more than 450 wild horses and burros up for adoption here last month, the dirt parking lot was filled with cars and trucks _ but very few horse trailers.
While wild horses still draw curious onlookers, the market for adopting them in Utah and across the West has cooled dramatically.
"The economy is playing a huge role," Jared Redington, who manages 70 hilly acres (30 hectares) at the base of the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake City that serve as a short-term Bureau of Land Management holding facility for horses and burros.
In 2002, more than 7,700 were adopted nationwide. Last year, as part of a steady decline, it was 3,700. And so far this fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, only 713 have been adopted, according to agency figures.
It's a discouraging development for an agency that relies on adoptions to help keep wild populations in check and is out of room at long-term holding facilities for unadopted horses.
"This is pretty grave but the BLM understands the gravity of the situation," said Paul McGuire, acting director of the wild horse and burro program in Nevada, which has more than 17,000 wild horses, the most of any state.
Under a 1971 law, the Bureau of Land Management manages around 33,000 wild horses in 10 Western states, mostly descendants of domesticated horses and burros that escaped or were set loose long ago.
Without any predators in the wild, horse populations can grow quickly, putting a strain on land designated by the Bureau of Land Management for habitat.
Each year, government agents take thousands of horses and burros off the range and put them up for adoption. More than 220,000 have been adopted since 1971.
But these days, even at rock-bottom prices _ $125 each and $25 more for a "buddy" _ the agency is struggling to find buyers.
"They can't afford the hay. That's what I hear the most," said Vicky Green, president of the Intermountain Wild Horse & Burro Advisors, a West Jordan, Utah-based organization that offers advice for those thinking about adopting horses.
The price for a ton of hay was about $110 when Green first started adopting wild horses 10 years ago. Since then, it's climbed to around $230 or $240. It's fallen recently, but not enough to make a difference with adoptions.
Feed costs aren't the only reason. There is also the rising price of fuel and the falling price for domesticated horses on the market, driven in part by the closure of the nation's horse slaughterhouses.
And with growing urban populations, there are fewer people with a place for a horse.
"When you look at the potential horse-owning population of the U.S., it is at best static if not shrinking," McGuire said.
That leaves the Bureau of Land Management in a tight spot.
The agency says there are nearly 6,000 more horses on the range than they'd like but they have little room to put the "excess."
The cost of holding 33,000 horses and burros _ which last year was more than $28 million _ is "spiraling out of control," according to Tom Gorey, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman in Washington, D.C.
The Government Accountability Office last fall said the Bureau of Land Management should consider euthanizing wild horses or selling off large numbers to cut costs.
Unchecked, the GAO said, the wild horse program budget could require $58 million this year and $77 million by 2012.
Madeleine Pickens, the wife of Dallas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, has proposed a wild horse sanctuary in Nevada. Others have recommended similar operations run by nonprofit organizations. Another option is ramping up a contraceptive program or finding other ways to reduce fertility in the wild.
Gus Warr, who runs the Bureau of Land Management's wild horse program in Utah, said he's hoping part of the adoption downturn is simply that winter adoptions tend to be sluggish.
In the tiny town of Delta, the Bureau of Land Management put 362 horses up for adoption in January. Genetic tests show the horses, members of the Sulphur Herd, are linked to those used by Spanish explorers hundreds of years ago.
Despite their lineage, only eight found new homes that day, though a dozen more have been adopted via the Internet since then. Adoptions have met with better success in warmer climates this winter, including Texas and Florida.
"We've got several more months of wet, sloppy, cold, unfavorable conditions," Warr said. "Once spring gets here, hopefully our adoptions will pick up."
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