"You've got to get some kind of break from the government," she said. "We need help from them." She estimated her plan would save the government as much as $700 million in costs otherwise spent for long-term holding by 2020.
BLM officials project holding costs in 2009 at $10.3 million for horses in long-term care and $22.6 million for those in short-term facilities, where they are readied and made available for adoption.
The government pays ranchers about $475 per animal per year to provide long-term care for federally owned horses on private land. Most of those facilities are in the Midwest, where natural forage is more plentiful than in the arid West.
Pickens could apply for a similar contract, Wenker said, if her sanctuary was confined to private property.
The other problem with Pickens' proposal, Wenker said, involves use of public lands.
He said government land Pickens has considered for the sanctuary is ineligible because federal law restricts horses to areas where they existed when the Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act was enacted nearly four decades ago.
"Because the BLM grazing allotments under consideration by your foundation did not have wild horse herds in 1971, wild horses cannot now be placed there," Wenker wrote to Pickens in a Feb. 20 letter obtained by the AP.
"At this point, two options seem most plausible," Wenker wrote. "The BLM could contract with your foundation to care for wild horses strictly on private land. Alternatively, your foundation could own and care for the horses without compensation from the BLM, as you first proposed."
The BLM has said it would not implement killing healthy wild horses this fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 while it seeks other alternatives to controlling populations.