Above: Roundups cause injuries like lacerations, broken bones and stress related issues that can cause death immediately or months later. Many, if not most, are preventable. Instead of formalizing concise and enforceable welfare rule, BLM spends a lot of money creating a facade. Sometimes we find out nothing at all is being done to treat injuries. (Image: Adobe Town roundup)
Roundups bring lots of attention to the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse and Burro Program. Helicopter roundups like the one that just completed at the Adobe Town HMA bring heightened awareness in the public as wild horses are run, babies lost and injuries and deaths occur.
Can we chat a bit about what happens afterwards?
Rock Springs Corral, one of the facilities where the Adobe Town wild horses were sent.
The Adobe Town wild horses were sent to 3 different facilities. BLM did not publish where they shipped horses each day leading to a nightmare if you are trying to track a specific horse. The Wheatland corrals in Wyoming are privately owned and have no visiting hours but holds a once-a-month adoption event where approved adopters can see a small number of wild horses and burros at the facility, but not see the rest of the facility. The BLM Rock Springs Wyoming facility has no regular visiting hours, but if you are an approved adopter looking for a horse you can make an appointment. The next adoption event at the Canon City facility in Colorado is September 26. None of these facilities allow the public to visit to check on welfare issues or simply view the horses and burros held there to adopt or simply see “public wild horses and burros.”
Standing on a vehicle roof looking through the trees to see a corner of Broken Arrow, Indian Lakes Rd., NV.
Not only is access to these facilities abysmal or nonexistent, welfare concerns are off the charts.
The average death rate from trap and into holding during the first six months is 1 in 9, or 12%. Deaths can rise over 22% in subset populations (like pregnant female burros) or during extreme winter or summer conditions (respiratory illnesses and heat related complications).
All of the facilities approved by BLM over the last 15 years have been private facilities. Facilities off-limits to the public except for a sanitized tour once a year or limited to seeing a few pens during an adoption event.
We did a series on holding facilities that every advocate should find time to check out:
Wild Horse Education and Rewilding America Now filed a brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to shed light on neglect and abuse in the current BLM system of holding focusing on the privately owned facility in Winnemucca, NV.
One short life. How the system failed a baby burro.
But what about after on range management gives away resources to private profit lines, the roundup happens and a captured wild horse or burro has survived? Does that mean they are safe?
No, it means they need to face the next hurdle of private long term facilities, adoption or Sale.
Above: At this event a single person was allowed to take 12 burros. Another person was allowed to take 1 horse and 5 burros were crowded into a 2 horse trailer (apparently bound to cross state lines into Tennessee). Not only do we fear these burros will land at the nearest auction house, we fear death from mishandling causing capture stress.
BLM held one of the many adoption/sale events they tout as “successfully finding good homes” to media and Congress in North Carolina last week. BLM runs numerous events and you can find them on their Facebook page.
You will also find many of the horses and burros sold (for as little as $5. to $25.) at these events on kill-buyer and auction house Facebook pages for hundreds of dollars in a week or two. Many of them will just ship off to Mexico and Canada and never been seen. A precious few will actually land in a safe home.
Christine Laughlin had gone to potentially take one of the older donkeys BLM had said would be at the event. The older ones did not show up at the event. She did not see any real vetting and people simply showing up to wait for the “no shows” (the people that adopted that do not come for pick-up as those horses would join the sale list prior to the end of the event).
Adopter did not show, horse went for $25. to someone that showed up onsite.
Her communication with us confirmed that the “clearance rack” mentality that pervades these events was in full swing. She admitted she cried and was sick when she left.
Above: Wild horses from all over landed at this event and went for $25. BLM is not being careful with finding “good homes,” but shuffling horses and burros out of holding to make room for more to be rounded up.
What is Sale Authority (SA)?
When a wild horse or burro is adopted title of ownership transfers (much like a car) and where BLM wipes their hands of any responsibility for the animal. For the sale program the “totle” is simply referenced as a “bill of sale.” At that juncture the wild horse or burro will lose all protection afforded by the 1971 Act against sale to slaughter and becomes a domestic animal under law. It is legal to sell your horse in the U.S. to ship across the border for slaughter.
The Burns Amendment (Appropriations bill in 2004*) allowed the BLM to sell “excess” wild horses and burros if the animals are more than ten years of age or have been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least three times. However, it is important to note BLM interprets those guidelines as discretionary. That means they can decide a 6 month old is “unadoptable” and sell it to a friend, or they can put a 25 year old stallion on the internet adoption if an advocate wants it to drive up the price into the tens-of-thousands of dollar range (we have all seen this multiple times).
This is the “Sales Program.” A buyer can purchase any number of animals (as long as someone in the BLM says they can) and they become the buyer’s private property immediately upon purchase.
*It is interesting to note that immediately after the Burns Amendment slipped through Congress approximately 8,400 wild horses became eligible for sale in March 2004. Between 2005 and 2010, BLM data indicates that over 4,100 horses were sold under this provision at an average price of $17 each.
An deep investigative piece was published by ProPublica showing nearly 1800 wild horses going to one kill-buyer, Tom Davis. Video Below.
Immediately after this expose, Sales horses and burros declined (Fall 2012-2017).
In 2018, BLM launched the Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) and public attention was drawn from the Sales program; numbers rose dramatically and these horses and burros shipped out with little notice and zero oversight by BLM. The number of burros going “sale” is an extremely disturbing statistic given the rise in the illegal wildlife trade in donkey hides for Ejaio.
Chart below.
The AIP, where BLM gave people $1000. to adopt a wild horse or burro, unsurprisingly turned into a subsidized path to the slaughter pipeline.
BLM touted the program a “raging success” as they spent tax-payer money to subsidize the slaughter industry and called it “good homes.” Subsidized adoptions caused the number of horses and burros to funnel out of the system to double. A few landed safe, but more landed in danger. The AIP has been suspended after litigation demonstrated the severe flaws in the program. BLM is determining if they will revamp. We have heard that they are more than happy not to have the extra paperwork of AIP and that the Sale Program is continuing to funnel enough through.
BLM has always been abysmal at doing any oversight once a horse or burro leaves a BLM corral (and is pretty bad at oversight while they are in BLM corrals as well).
You can read the entire shipping manifest for the event in North Carolina HERE.
Wild horses from North Lander (WY), South Steens (OR), Triple B (NV) and so many others. Seventeen (17) of the $25.
Sale Authority horses were also YEARLING fillies from North Lander (Muskrat Basin, WY) and Cedar Mountain (UT).
Muskrat Basin is where a foal was roped and killed and the death of the baby was not even counted in the totals during the North Lander roundup. We could not see at the Muskrat trap, but could see just how young these babies are at this summer roundup below. You can see all updates from that roundup HERE.
These babies are some of the Sale Authority babies that were sold in North Carolina. Just think about their frst year of life and if they will even make it through their second year.
If you believe these events are “just a couple,” think again. These events are shuffling wild horses and burros across the country and out of sight every single week.
If you live near one of these events, please show up and document what happens. Please show BLM that the public is watching.
One way to help put an end to transport for slaughter is to pass the SAFE Act. After title transfers wild horses and burros are domestics under law. Passage of the SAFE Act would go a long way to minimizing and shutting down the slaughter pipeline for American horses and burros.
Safeguard America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE Act) was reintroduced (and sponsored by) by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) in the Senate and Reps. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) in the House.
The introduced legislation would permanently ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption and would also prohibit the export of live horses to Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses to be sold overseas. The lawmakers hope to include the SAFE Act as part of the 2025 Farm Bill when it is considered by Congress later this year.
In the House the bill is now referenced as H.R. 1661 and in the Senate as S. 775.
It is really important when you contact lawmakers to use the bill number and not simply say “SAFE.” Give the bill number and full title: Safeguard America’s Forgotten Equines Act. Every year numerous bills will use the acronym “SAFE.”
You can send a letter to your House and Senate Representatives by simply clicking HERE.
To anyone with a heart it is painfully clear that the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program is not a program focused on protecting our wild ones from on the range until they wipe their hands clean after title transfer. On range nothing is done to protect habitat from encroaching private profit lines and water sources disappear or remain in disrepair. During roundups we see repeated events that BLM refuses to acknowledge need to change.
If you have any doubt, please remember, BLM does not even have concise and enforceable welfare rules. Only after litigation did BLM create a draft policy. Instead of going through formal channels (including public comment and review) BLM just typed the word “Permanent” on the draft and created a gray area of un-enforceability of inadequate standards left up to the discretion of the single employee in charge.
From range through adoption or sale, there is not one place BLM devotes attention to actually protecting the well-being of our wild ones.
We are working on a long-form report as one of our cases against abuse winds down. We will have the report soon.
An educated and active advocacy is needed more than ever. Together, we must be their voice.
Categories: Wild Horse Education
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