Federal Scandal Brewing: Thousands of Wild Horses Illegally Slaughtered
Now they’ve gone TOO FAR!
Watchdog groups are accusing the Bureau of of Land Management (BLM) of illegally selling thousands of wild horses to be slaughtered between 2008 and 2012 under the office’s Wild Horse and Burro Program (WH&B).
A report released by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) last week, found that the BLM sold 1,794 federally-protected wild horses to a rancher in Colorado, who then sold the horses to be slaughtered in Mexico.
The American Wild Horse Preservation says selling wild horses for slaughter both violates BLM policy and a Congressional ban.
The BLM employee who sold the horses to Colorado rancher, Tom Davis, received monetary compensation based on the number of horses sold.
The detailed OIG investigation unearthed inconsistency among state-level brand inspectors and licensed officials in Colorado and New Mexico, in what reads like Jim Geraghty’s Weed Agency.
Summarizing the OIG’s lengthy report, the American Wild Horse Preservation wrote:
“It took more than three years for the OIG to confirm what we’ve always known – that the BLM sold 1,795 federally-protected wild horses to a known kill buyer who sold them to slaughter,” said Suzanne Roy, Director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC). “Unfortunately, there will be no justice for these mustangs, who suffered brutal deaths in Mexican slaughter plants. No one at the BLM is being held accountable for this betrayal, and Tom Davis is not being prosecuted for violating his contractual obligation to not sell the horses for slaughter.”
The report found that, “BLM did not follow current law while managing WH&B. BLM also failed to follow its own policy of limiting horse sales and ensuring that the horses sold went to good homes and were not slaughtered.”
“BLM employees never attempted to verify the information that Davis provided regarding his intentions for the horses, despite the unusually large number of horses being sold to him, and never stopped selling horses to Davis despite receiving information that Davis was sending horses to slaughter,” wrote the AWHP.
Cost to the taxpayer was $140,000, which was spent transporting horses to Davis who paid $10 a head. Davis then sold the horses, raking in, “$154,000 in profits by selling them for slaughter,” according to the AWHP.
To date, no government officials have been held accountable for the massive wild horse slaughter.
“Unfortunately, there will be no justice for these mustangs, who suffered a brutal death in Mexican slaughter plants,” said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. “No one at the BLM is being held accountable for this betrayal, and Tom Davis is not being prosecuted for violating his contractual obligation to not sell the horses for slaughter.”
“The solution to wild horse management is not selling horses and burros for slaughter,” Roy concluded. “It’s time for BLM to stop rounding up wild horses and burros, stop stockpiling them in holding facilities and start managing them humanely on-the-range using the safe and effective PZP fertility control vaccine, as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences.”
[Featured image from Wikimedia Commons]
[h/t The Hill]
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Comments
“No one at the BLM is being held accountable for this betrayal…”
This can be generalized to “No one at any government agency is being held accountable for any betrayal or crime…”
Again, it’s an IG report that brings us this story.
Note that IGs have been targeted worse under this ObamaBanana Republic than at any prior time in history.
Truth is the enemy of totalitarians because it exposes them. Thus, the IGs are targets to be destroyed.
I have respect for those IGs who due their duty and at significant professional risk. Integrity is in short supply in D.C.
With due respect, you must be kidding. Scandal? If IRS, VA, EPA, TSA, DHS, DEA, DOJ and State Dep. corruption and incompetence doesn’t reach the level of “scandal”, what make you think this will be “bump in the road” like Benghazi?
We are in uncharted territory. The Clinton Family syndicate will make us all believe that these were the good ole days. “Fasten your seat belts, it’s gonna be a bumpy night.”
Remember the dentist who killed the lion (or hippo, or whatever it was) over in Africa? If he’d killed a person we’d have never heard of it.
People care about animals because they can project their own feelings on them with no chance the animal will disagree. This would be front page news if it were republicans involved but since it is not it will not be.
How could I forget the HHS/Obamacare “scandal”?
What, no mention of the horse slaughterer’s connections to Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, which mysteriously escaped investigation? Or the man’s claims there was a tacit understanding, the feds had to have known he was actually slaughtering them but didn’t care?
We also need to talk about why horses are being transported to Mexico and Canada for slaughter. Animal Rights groups, take a bow. Horses are very hard to transport in large numbers. They don’t ride in trucks and railcars like cows do. Many of them are gravely injured or killed being transported this way. The Mexican slaughterhouses are horrific and many horses are starved for days before being dispatched.
But the AR people got their way. We can no longer humanely slaughter horses in this country. If you’ve ever had horses, you will know that sometimes they must be put down. When we euthanize them at home, it’s usually done with medication, rendering the meat unusable. I am a horse lover, don’t get me wrong. But I would much rather put a horse down humanely and use the meat to feed other animals. That is my plan for the two oldsters I have now. I will donate them to a big cat sanctuary where they will be humanely killed and then dissected by veterinary students and their meat will feed the big cats in captivity.
But we won’t have this conversation, will we? No, we will just load them onto kill trucks and then out of sight, out of mind.
Another horse lover here. I’d also rather see the overpopulation of horses humanely harvested for food here in the US than to have them either transported in horrendous conditions to Mexico or languish in some of the conditions I regularly see them in
The equine shelters are already flooded with animals. Breeding programs for race and show horses already produce more animals each year then there are good homes available from hobby riders for the those animals that aren’t fast enough to win or close enough to breed standards for future stud.
I regularly see ill-cared for horses when I drive around the exurbs. They were often purchased by parents for children who lost interest when the novelty wore off and the reality of the time and expense of proper care set in. These horses aren’t quite in bad enough shape to call in animal welfare but they certainly aren’t thriving.
The system cannot absorb the annual increase in the feral horse herd on BLM lands. But the BLM has to do something with them to prevent damage to the range from over grazing.
I’ll be the first to agree that the government should follow the law, just like everybody else, and those who don’t should be fired.
Nonetheless, I’m glad that NC Mountain Girl used the correct term to describe these critters. They’re _feral_ horses, not wild horses, and they can do considerable damage to rangeland if unchecked.
A woman I know in Burns, Oregon, where there’s a BLM wild horse corral, is the niece of the wrangler who segregated the “wild horse” herds in Harney County and named them. He knew exactly which ranch they had escaped or been released from. And this includes the famed “Kiger Mustangs,” supposedly with a direct lineage to the horses of the Conquistadores.
The real shame is that wild horse management consists of rounding them up and then confining them to a corral, since most are unadoptable and unwanted.
It would be far better to have them humanely euthanized to provide protein for those whose cultural taboos do not proscribe the consumption of horse meat (e.g., including some European countries). Allowing them to overgraze and starve to death on America’s sagebrush steppe, no matter how vast, or confining them to a corral, is hardly humane.
No scandal, although the animal angle offers a brief “isn’t that awful” moment. Gov’t. officials are immune from prosecution. Any attempts to hold them accountable are dismissed as partisan witch hunts.
Michael Vick was unavailable for comment.
Horses slaughtered! Do you get so upset over the “slaughter” of hogs and cattle?
Very different animals. Have you ever had a horse? Yes, I object to the “slaughter” of horses but I object to the inhumane transport and slaughter of horses even more.
My horses will be “put down” humanely and compassionately with no fear and no harm beforehand. Their bodies will nourish another animal. Vet students will get anatomy lessons.
As a matter of fact, I do. However, I understand that it is like comparing apples to oranges. Animal husbandry, and barring the farming of animals, those who raise cattle and hogs are taught to treat the animals humanely.
Horses are gentle creatures and the thought of what must unfold during the slaughtering leaves me with one thought and that being, I trust there is a special place in helll for them and along with all those other individuals who abuse the most gentle , innocent and defenseless.
How are horses more “gentle” creatures than chickens or sardines?
Horses desire relationships with humans. If you’ve never had a horse, you wouldn’t understand.
Really? Then why do they have to be broken? Wild horses don’t even know any humans, why would they want a relationship with one? And above all, how is such a desire, even if it exists outside the imaginations of little girls, morally relevant? How does it give them moral status? Is a misanthrope or a hermit less valuable in God’s eyes than a whore?!
Horses can go feral, as can dogs. The salient fact is that they can be gentled and brought into a relationship. And by the way, I’m not arguing that you can’t eat one. I’m arguing against the inhumane transportation and slaughter, just as I would object to a pig, or a cow, or a chicken being brutally, painfully slaughtered. I think you are arguing for arguing’s sake.
if you cannot parse the difference between an animal not bred for food and one bred for it then there is no hope for you.
So you’ve got a problem with slaughtering deer, or feral cows and pigs? What about wild fish? What the *** difference does it make whether an animal was bred for slaughter or not? It’s still an animal, and there is no moral difference between a horse and a cow, or for that matter between a dog and a chicken.
Animals have no rights; the whole concept of rights doesn’t apply to them. They are things, not people. Killing them is not murder, it’s perfectly within their owner’s right, just as someone who owns a tree has the right to chop it down, and it’s nobody else’s business. The statement that “there will be no justice for these mustangs” is ridiculous.
It’s a cultural bias. As with dogs horses often work closely with and bond to humans, so in many cultures it is seen as taboo to consume them.
In the case of feral horses there was also the barbaric practice that developed after WWII as shown in the movie The Misfits. The animals would be chased with trucks (and even helicopters in some cases) When the truck got close to a horse, a cowboy would throw a rope attached to an old tire round the animal’s neck. The horse would run itself to exhaustion trying to shed the tire and then be collected to send to slaughter.
Repulsion over the practice lead to the laws that mandate the annual round up and adoption of increases in the feral horse and donkey herds on federal lands.
We are supposed to be a multicultural society, in which mere “cultural taboos” like the biblical prohibition on sodomy may not be legislated. You don’t care that my culture has a taboo against eating pigs, so why should a Frenchman or a Chinaman care that your culture has one against eating horses or dogs? Why isn’t my right to eat what I like protected by the same 9th amendment that protects my right to sleep with whom I like?
There is no making light of this atrocity but I will say that my first thought in seeing BLM going toO far,was that not only BLM calling for the murder of police officers, but indeed they have gone too far in that now they are going after wild horses.
A breath of relief did come in that it wasn’t the Chincoteague ponies upon seeing wild horses in the title. The pony swim is something to behold and why the slaughter of those wild horses is evil (in that no other word describes such cruelty).
BLM = Black Lives Matter
BLM = Bureau Land Management
I’m pretty sure they are different organizations.
BLM secret plan to destroy wild hirses
https://wildhorseinvestigationteam.wordpress.com/blm-secret-plan-to-destroy-wild-horses/
http://www.habitatforhorses.org/tag/tom-davis/
My brother breeds sheep. He wanted to be a horse breeder but he just wasn’t tall enough.
Yes, but the big question is, did the First Lady survive?
Send those wild horses to Florida, so that certain people will target them instead of show horses:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/officials-champion-show-horse-killed-butchered-florida-34736722