The Sale Authority Program: How we got here

Background on the 2004 Burns Amendment

In 2004, Republican Senator Conrad Burns from Montana quietly inserted a rider into the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005, a 3,000-page omnibus appropriations bill, which amended the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

The bill became notorious for its size and for being drafted by the House in less than 24 hours and then rushed through the Senate. Burns, who served as Chair of the Interior AppropriationsSubcommittee, secretly slipped the amendment into the spending bill without introducing it in Congress for discussion or a vote.

This amendment overhauled wild horse policy by creating a sale program for wild horses and burros that allowed animals to be sold, transferring ownership immediately to purchasers. It defined the “sale authority” horses as animals who are over 10 years old, or who had been offered for adoption three or more times.

Even more concerning, it removed language from Section 3 of the 1971 Act that protected wild equines from commercial sale and slaughter, and inserted language, allowing them to be sold "without limitation. The amendment required the Bureau of Land Management to sell excess, unadoptable horses and specified they "shall be made available for sale without limitation."Every year since, AWHC has fought to include language in the annual appropriations legislation that would ban the commercial slaughter of wild horses and burros.ControversyBesides being implemented in a highly controversial manner, the sale program has been the subject of a slaughter scandal.

In September 2012, Dave Phllips, ProPublica, published an investigative report revealing that the BLM had sold at least 1,700 wild horses and burros toColorado livestock hauler Tom Davis since 2009. This represented 70 percent of all animals purchased through the sale program. The investigation showed that BLM sold these horses toDavis for $10 each, with the government paying shipping costs to deliver the horses to him.The article noted that BLM began shipping "truckloads and truckloads" of horses to Davis after his neighbor and business associate, Ken Salazar, became Interior Secretary in 2009. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that even after being alerted on April 19, 2012, that Phillips suspected Davis of selling horses for slaughter to Mexico, the BLM still sold 106 wild horses to Davis on April 24, 2012.

Today since 2012 (the first year tracked in federal program data), the Bureau of Land Management has sold 12,109 wild horses and burros through the Sale Authority Program, with a notable increase in the last two years.The implementation of the BLM's online corral system has accelerated this trend. The online platform makes large numbers of horses and burros available for adoption simultaneously and hosts frequent adoption events. However, when animals are not adopted through these online events, they quickly accumulate failed adoption attempts. Under the Burns Amendment's "three strikes" provision, horses that are passed over for adoption three times become eligible for unrestricted sale. This process effectively funnels more animals into the sale pipeline at an accelerated pace.Reports from on the ground rescues note that horses as young as one year old have been rescued from kill pens and are found to be sale authority animals.With the end of the Adoption Incentive Program, AWHC remains concerned about the welfare of sale authority horses and burros and their ending up in the slaughter pipeline in direct contravention of a Congressional mandate to protect them m