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BLM suspends wild horse sales
after 41 are resold to slaughter
RENO––U.S. Bureau of Land Management director Kathleen Clarke
on April 25, 2005 suspended all wild horse and burro transactions.
“In response to two recent incidents involving the commercial processing
of horses who had been resold or traded after being bought from the BLM,
the Bureau is reviewing its sales procedures,” said the terse BLM
announcement.
Clarke acted one week after Cavel International Inc. slaughtered six wild
horses purchased for $50 each in Canon City, Colorado, by former rodeo
clown Dustin Herbert, of Meeker, Oklahoma.
“Herbert claimed that the horses would be used for a church youth
program, and would not be sold for slaughter. Less than three days after
he purchased the animals, all six were slaughtered so that their meat
could end up on foreign dinner tables,” posted the American Wild
Horse Preservation Campaign, of Lompoc, California.
“Six wild horses’ blood was spilled, but it could easily have
been 60 or 200,” American Horse Defense Fund president Trina Bellak
told Scott Sonner of Associated Press. Virtually any and all of the wild
horses sold recently under the Conrad Burns sale authority amendment [to
the 1971 Wild & Free Roaming Horse & Burro Protection Act] are
in jeopardy,” Bellak said.
Bellak’s warning was affirmed when Cavel International on April 25
slaughtered 35 more wild horses.
“The horses came from a broker who obtained them from the Rosebud
Sioux Tribe,” reported John Helperin of Associated Press. “The
tribe traded 87 of the 105 aging horses it bought from the government
for younger ones. BLM officials, tipped off by Agriculture Department
inspectors, persuaded the plant managers to stop,” before all of
the first lot of 51 horses were killed.
“That saved the lives of 16 mustangs,” Helperin continued. “The
plant agreed to give the horses food and water until the BLM could pick
them up. BLM officials also intervened to save 36 mustangs in Nebraska
who were on their way to Cavel.”
The Ford Motor Company, makers of the Mustang automobile line, donated
$19,000 toward the transportation and care of the horses who were to have
been killed.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, of South Dakota, bought 208 wild horses, and
the Three Affiliated Tribes, of North Dakota, bought 250, at just $1.00
apiece.
“We just wanted to help,” Rosebud Sioux executive secretary
Todd Fast Horse told Ryan Slattery of Indian Country Today.
Added Richard Mayer, CEO for the Three Affiliated Tribes, “We wanted
to play a role in preserving these wild mustangs. They are part of our
heritage and are really holy to us. They deserve to be protected.”
The Three Affiliated Tribes are the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara.
After the resale to slaughter came to light, Indian Country Today reported
that, “The tribe specified that it wanted to receive young horses
from the BLM,” for use in a tribal youth program, “but the horses
who arrived were in their mid-20s to mid-30s.”
Robert Moore, chief of staff for Rosebud Sioux president Charles Colombe,
said “The tribe is saddened that the horses’ new [owner] chose
to end the horses’ [lives]. A committee of the council found a broker,
Jack Gyer,” Moore explained, “and I have yet to figure out how
he came into the picture, but he knew somebody who knew someone else.
I’m amazed at the interest and level of intensity that people have
about this issue,” Moore added, “considering we are one of the
poorest counties in the U.S.,” as if that excused a public breach
of trust involving a pledge to respect animal welfare.
“They seemingly ignore the human needs,” Moore objected. “The
council has to address public safety and the health of the tribe, and
we saw the older horses as a matter of public safety.”
“We unfortunately did not put a stipulation in [the deal with Gyer]
that these horses should not be sold to slaughter,” Fast Horse told
Las Vegas Review-Journal correspondent Samantha Young. “We overlooked
that. We’re not going to authorize any more transfers,” Fast
Horse promised.
Congress
The
Burns amendment, passed as an almost unnoticed rider to an omnibus budget
bill in November 2004, directed the BLM to sell “without limitation”
any horse who has been removed from the range and is at least 10 years
of age or has been offered for adoption three times without being taken.
“What has transpired here is a wake-up call to the Congress,”
said Representative Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), “and is evidence
as to why immediate action should be taken on my legislation to restore
the ban on the commercial sale for slaughter of our nation’s wild
horse heritage.”
Rahall, Representative Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky), and Senator Robert Byrd
(D-West Virginia) are authors of proposed legislation to repeal the Burns
amendment. The Rahall/Whitfield bill has 50 co-sponsors so far, not enough
to assure it a good change of clearing the 435-member House of Representatives.
Whitfield and Representatives John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) and John Spratt (D-S.C.)
have also reintroduced a bill to ban the sale of horses for human consumption,
on either the U.S. or foreign market. A similar bill offered in 2004 did
not advance.
Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) has pledged to introduce a companion bill.
According to John Lopez, deputy chief of staff for Ensign, “Senator
Ensign’s bill would ensure there are no more outlets for slaughter.
It would shut down the slaughterhouses in the U.S.”––but
only if it passes into law.
The three remaining U.S. horse slaughter plants––Cavel, Dallas
Crown, and Beltex Corporation––together killed about 66,000
horses in 2004. Horses were also sold to be slaughtered in Canada.
Days before the horse slaughter incidents, the U.S. Senate gave preliminary
approval to legislation by Ensign and fellow Nevada Republican Senator
Harry Reid (who co-sponsored the Burns amendment), which allocated $5
million toward the estimated $9 million cost of building a proposed privately
operated wild horse adoption and visitor center near Mound Horse, Nevada.
The allocation was attached as a rider to an $80.7 billion appropriation
to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On May 6 the rider was reportedly dropped during negotiations to reconcile
the Senate and House versions of the bill.
No
follow-up
Of
about 8,400 impounded wild horses who were mandated for sale by the Burns
amendment, the BLM through April 25 had delivered 992 to buyers and sold
950 more who were awaiting delivery, BLM spokesperson Tom Gorey told Samantha
Young.
Gorey said that the BLM had no plans to contact buyers to verify what
they have done with horses already received.
“Those are no longer government-protected horses,” Gorey said.
“They have passed into private ownership. We have many responsibilities
as it is without adding a new obligation to track a horse or burro.”
“We are still asking advocates to encourage responsible groups to
consider acquiring sale authority horses [wild horses eligible for sale]
and to be prepared if and when sales resume,” said Willis Lamm of
Kickin’ Back Ranch Wild Horses, as a cofounder of the Alliance of
Wild Horse Advocates. “Hopefully any resumption of sale authority
will include additional safeguards for the horses with respect to potential
exploitation by scam artists and get-rich-quick schemers.”
Beyond sales of horses to slaughter, Lamm was outspokenly critical of
the thinking behind the Internet-distributed sales pitch for a “Mustang
Training Initiative Program” promoted by an entity calling itself
the “Mustang Heritage Foundation.” The IRS service contractor
<www.Guidestar.org>
lists no nonprofit organization by that name.
The “Mustang Training Initiative Program” appears to be a project
of horse trainer John Lyons, publisher of Perfect Horse magazine, but
ANIMAL PEOPLE found no mention of it on Lyons’ personal web site.
The sales pitch suggested that trainers certified by Lyons could earn
“at least $64,800 for an 18-month time frame and beyond,” gentling
and saddle-training at least 1,000 three-to-five-year-old wild horses
who will be offered for adoption by the BLM.
