Scandal: A series examining corruption in leadership and its downstream consequences.
Federal wild-horse sales are facing new scrutiny after an investigation by The New York Times found that mustangs sold by the Bureau of Land Management later appeared in commercial livestock channels supplying horse-slaughter plants in Canada. The findings prompted Skydog Sanctuary, a wild-horse rescue organization that had been tracking the animals, to call Thursday for the immediate suspension of the bureau’s Sale Authority program.
Livestock inspection records reviewed by the Times showed government-sold mustangs aboard trucks bound for Canadian slaughter facilities. At a Bureau of Land Management adoption and sales event in Poteau, Okla., the newspaper reported that at least 55 mustangs sold by the government were identified days later at livestock auctions in Kansas and Texas frequented by slaughter buyers. The horses were identified in part by the bureau’s distinctive freeze brands.
The cases highlight a difference between protections for adopted horses and those sold outright.
Under federal law, an adopted horse remains federal property for at least a year. An animal can become eligible for sale if it is more than 10 years old or has been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least three times. A sale transfers ownership immediately, and the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act provides that an animal sold through that process is no longer considered a wild free-roaming horse or burro for purposes of the law.
BLM requires purchasers to certify that they will provide humane care and will not knowingly, recklessly or negligently transfer an animal to someone intending to process it into commercial products. Most annual Interior appropriations laws in recent decades have also barred BLM from using appropriated funds for sales that result in wild horses or burros being processed into commercial products.
“Laws are like spiders’ webs; the big flies get through, while the little ones are caught.”
— Honoré de Balzac, The Firm of Nucingen (1838)
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