Government Caught Illegally Selling Wild Horses to Slaughter Amidst Massive Roundup Campaign

National Coalition Calls for Emergency Halt to all Mustang Removals and Sales

The government has launched a new campaign to roundup and remove thousands more wild horses from the range this fall and winter. This comes as evidence mounts that the Interior Department, under Secretary Ken Salazar, is illegally selling wild horses for slaughter. In response to a damning investigative news report exposing the Department’s sale of capturedmustangsto a known kill buyer with longtime ties to Salazar, the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation) has called for an immediate halt to all sales and removals of wild horses from the range.

The news report, published by ProPublica and based in part on information provided byBLMwhistleblowers, revealed that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had sold 1,700 capturedmustangsto a livestock hauler named Tom Davis of La Jara, Colorado. TheBLMapproved the sales to Davis—a known kill buyer who purchases horses and ships them for slaughter in Mexico—under the guise that Davis would sell the horses “for use in movies” in Mexico. According to the article, Davis purchased horses for as little as $10 each and “would take males or females, so long as they were big.” It is well known that kill buyers sell horses by the pound to slaughter plants.

The article notes thatBLMbegan shipping “truckloads and truckloads” of horses to Davis after his neighbor and business associate, Ken Salazar, became Interior Secretary in 2009. Salazar is a fifth-generation rancher. Ranchers throughout the West lobby for the removal ofmustangsfrom public lands to make room for cheap, taxpayer-subsidized livestock grazing. The livestock industry has also been a vocal advocate for slaughtering wild horses.

The ProPublica piece indicates that theBLMused Davis as an outlet for the huge stockpile of wild horses that it had rounded up and warehoused in holding facilities. There are now more wild horses in government holding facilities (50,000) than remain free onpublic landsin the West (<32,000). Appropriations language, passed annually by Congress, prohibits theBLMfrom selling captured wild horses for slaughter.

“TheBLMturned a blind eye to the intentions of a known kill buyer in selling thousands of federally-protected wild horses for slaughter in Mexico,” said Suzanne Roy, director of AWHC, whose coalition includes more than 50 horseadvocacy, conservation, public interest, and historic preservation organizations. “This unconscionable and illegal treatment of these American icons deserves immediate investigation and action.”

“In light of this devastating article, we call for an immediate halt to the roundup, removal, and sale ofmustangsby the government while an independent and credible investigation of this situation is undertaken,” said Roy. “In removing thousands more wild horses from the West over the next four months, theBLMis setting the stage for the mass slaughter of captured wild horses. The American people will not tolerate this reprehensible and illegal treatment of America’s mustangs.”

Today, theBLMbegan a mustang roundup in northeastern Nevada’s Antelope Complex. The agency will use helicopters to terrorize, stampede, and capture 200 wild horses and remove them from the range. AWHC will have an observer onsite and will make video available of the roundup activities beginning Tuesday.

Instead of rounding up wild horses by the thousands, theBLMshould be managing them on the range, AWHC and its coalition partners say. The federal government could save millions of dollars of taxpayer money every year by using responsible and humane solutions, including fertility control, that preserve America’s wild horses for future generations.

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation) is a coalition of more than 45 horseadvocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage.