A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:
Fighting allegations that
wild horses removed from Bureau of
Land Management property are
clandestinely sold to slaughter, Salt
Lake District BLM state wildforce
manager Glade Anderson on July 28
told Deseret News staff writer
Steven R. Mickelson that Utah
Hunter Association volunteers
would henceforth screen prospective
adoptors and inspect their facilities.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:
BY ENZO GIOBBE, COFOUNDER, HORSEAID
Does HorseAid agree that 90%
of the horses adopted through the Bureau
of Land Management go to slaughter, as
alleged in a recent expose by Martha
Mendoza of Associated Press?
No. We cannot find any evidence
to substantiate the 90% figure,
allegedly tossed out by a BLM official
who now denies he said it. Based on years
of investigation, recognizing that there are
still a lot of “Mom and Pop” rendering
houses that do not report brands, and factoring
in the unreported traffic in horses for
slaughter in Canada and Mexico,
HorseAid puts the figure for all the horses
who have ever gone through the BLM program
somewhere between 35% and 60%.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:
DENVER––Wild horses rounded up by the Bureau
of Land Management and sold to slaughter hit the headlines on
January 4––again.
This time Associated Press reporter Martha Mendoza,
of Albuquerque, New Mexico, chased the perennial allegations
of BLM malfeasance by tracing paper trails, something
animal advocates have not done on any comparable scale.
“Using freeze-brand numbers and computer records,”
Mendoza reported, “the AP traced more than 57 former BLM
horses sold to slaughterhouses since September. Eighty percent
were less than 10 years old and 25% were less than five years
old.” Further, Mendoza alleged, “The AP matched computer
records of horse adoptions with a computerized list of federal
employees and found that more than 200 current BLM employees
have adopted more than 600 wild horses and burros.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
SAN ANTONIO––The Del Rio,
Texas grand jury probe of alleged illegal sales
of wild horses to slaughter has apparently
ended without issuing criminal charges.
Acting on the advice of Charles
Brooks, trial attorney for the Environment and
Natural Resources Division of the Department
of Justice, U.S. attorney James William Blagg
and John E. Murphy, first assistant U.S. attorney,
criminal division, on July 5 recommended
to the Department of the Interior that “the
investigation within the Western District of
Texas into the incident involving Don
Galloway and the 36 horses placed on a ranch
in Terrell County, Texas should be closed.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:
New Zealand conservation minister Denis Marshall on May 14 lifted the 1981 protection
order safeguarding the Kaimanawa Wild Horse Range, a primary training area for the
New Zealand Army, and ordained that 1,000 resident wild horses are to be shot or sold. “Five
hundred wild horses have a stay of execution for three years,” horse advocate Ellen Lee posted
to the AR-News e-mail list, “while their impact is assessed. If anyone can find suitable
land, another 300 can be moved to it, but the DoC will not fund any part of this, and it would
be almost impossibly expensive. At the end of three years,” she continued, “either the relocated
herd or the remnant on Army land will be exterminated, or both,” depending on the
DoC findings. “The final toll may be the entire herd. The shooting is to be ground-based.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:
Wild Horses: A Spirit Unbroken, by Elwyn Hartley Edwards.
112 pages, $24.95 hardcover.
Swans, by Dafila Scott.
72 pages, 50 color photos, $14.95 hardcover.
Frogs, by David Badger, with photos by John Netherton.
141 pages, $35.00 hardcover.
All from Voyageur Press (123 North 2nd St., Stillwater, MN 55082-5002), 1995.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.––The Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act is perilously
close to becoming an unfunded mandate, due to Congressional budget cuts.
If that happens, the Bureau of Land Management will be forced to return to the
range more than 8,000 horses and burros now in adoption programs and sanctuaries––without
the money to protect them from snipers and horsemeat contractors.
Since 1970, the BLM has been responsible for keeping the wild horse and burro
population on federal land at a level acceptable to grazing lease holders, without killing horses
or burros, and without allowing anyone else to. In that time the wild horse population has
officially quadrupled, to circa 50,000. Citing private surveys, wild horse advocates say it’s
less than half that number.
Either way, western ranchers say it’s too many. About 3.2 million cattle compete
for water and forage within the equines’ habitat. Ranchers used to just round up wild horses
and burros for slaughter. Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable drew attention to that practice in
their last film, The Misfits (1961), which gave impetus to Nevada secretary Velma Johnson’s
then little noted efforts to protect wild equines. When the “Wild Horse Annie Act” finally
outlawed the slaughter roundups in 1970, it was nicknamed in Johnson’s honor.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:
RENO––Suing the Bureau of Land
Management on June 19 for alleged maladministration
of the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming
Horse and Burro Act, the Fund for Animals
and Animal Protection Institute dropped at the
last minute a much discussed request for an
injunction to halt BLM wild horse and burro
roundups pending program reform.
As filed, Fund attorney Howard
Crystal told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “The pending
motion before Judge Howard McKibben
strictly concerns the matter on which Judge
McKibben ruled [in favor of the Fund and
A P I ] ten years ago––the adoption program.
Plaintiffs are requesting that the Court modify
its longstanding permanent injunction against
the BLM to require the agency to affirmatively
inquire into the intentions of adopters, rather
than continuing to implement a policy which
one Justice Department attorney refers to as
‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ In addition,” Crystal
said, “plaintiffs are seeking other changes in
the adoption program to help ensure that adopted
animals end up in the hands of people who
intend to care for them, rather than sell them.”