The House Friday passed a bill designed to improve federal management of wild horses and burros and increase the land on which they can roam.

The bill, which passed 239-185, would direct the Bureau of Land Management to take steps intended to maintain healthy herds on public lands.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II , D-W.Va., said the bill “will save our taxpayers money while saving tens of thousands of wild horses and burros from slaughter.”

The bill comes in response to reports of mismanagement of the herds since passage of a 1971 law designed to protect them. The bureau announced in 2008 that due to lack of funding and other limitations, it would be forced to kill up to 30,000 animals.

The law identified 53 million acres where the animals could roam, but the agency since then has removed about 19 million acres. The bill originally would have required the agency to restore this land, with the location unspecified.

The bill would outlaw the killing of healthy animals and institute sterilization and other fertility controls to manage the herds. It would enhance an existing program to encourage adoption of the animals, and it would bar adopters from slaughtering the animals for human consumption.

Doc Hastings of Washington, ranking Republican on the committee, said finding new land for the animals would cost taxpayers too much money. He offered an amendment that would have replaced the bill with a more limited provision to bar commercial slaughter of the animals.

The amendment failed, 74-348. A measure identical to the amendment passed the House in 2007 but did not come up in the Senate.

“Republicans are focused on creating the jobs in this country, but this Democratic Congress seems to be more worried about hundreds of millions of dollars for wild horses,” he said.