Update, Oct. 26, 2015: Three years ago, we revealed that
the federal government, which is supposed to protect wild horses, was instead
selling them to an advocate of horse slaughter. It wasn't clear what happened
to the horses after that. Now it is: a government report has found that 1,700
protected horses were killed.
The Bureau of Land Management faced a crisis this spring.
The agency protects and manages herds of wild horses that
still roam the American West, rounding up thousands of them each year to keep
populations stable.
But by March, government pens and pastures were nearly
full. Efforts to find new storage space had fallen flat. So had most attempts
to persuade members of the public to adopt horses. Without a way to relieve the
pressure, the agency faced a gridlock that would invite lawsuits and
potentially cause long-term damage to the range.
So the BLM did something it has done increasingly over the
last few years. It turned to a little-known Colorado livestock hauler named Tom
Davis who was willing to buy hundreds of horses at a time, sight unseen, for
$10 a head.
The BLM has sold Davis at least 1,700 wild horses and
burros since 2009, agency records show -- 70 percent of the animals purchased
through its sale program.
Like all buyers, Davis signs contracts promising that
animals bought from the program will not be slaughtered and insists he finds
them good homes.
But Davis is a longtime advocate of horse slaughter. By his
own account, he has ducked Colorado law to move animals across state lines and
will not say where they end up. He continues to buy wild horses for slaughter
from Indian reservations, which are not protected by the same laws. And since
2010, he has been seeking investors for a slaughterhouse of his own.
"Hell, some of the finest meat you will ever eat is a
fat yearling colt," he said. "What is wrong with taking all those BLM
horses they got all fat and shiny and setting up a kill plant?"
Animal welfare advocates fear that horses bought by Davis
are being sent to the killing floor.
To read more on this story, click here: All the Missing Horses: What Happened to the Wild Horses Tom Davis Bought From the Gov’t?
