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Susan Montoya Bryan / AP file
Wild horses scour the ground for strands of hay during an adoption event put on by the Bureau of Land Management in Albuquerque, N.M., in 2009.
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 [1] -- 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.
“The BLM says it protects wild horses,” said Laura Leigh, founder of the Nevada-based advocacy group Wild Horse Education, “but when they are selling to a guy like this you have to wonder.”
BLM officials say they carefully screen buyers and are adamant that no wild horses ever go to slaughter.
“We don’t feel compelled to sell to anybody we don’t feel good about,” agency spokesman Tom Gorey said. “We want the horses to be protected.”
Sally Spencer, who runs the wild horse sales program [2], said the agency has had no indication of problems with Davis and it would be unfair for the BLM to look more closely at him based on the volume of his purchases.
"It is no good to just stir up rumors,” she said. “We have never heard of him not being able to find homes. So people are innocent until proven guilty in the United States."
Congress reverses a move that previously prevented the slaughter of horses for exportation of the meat. Paul Crawley reports.
Some BLM employees say privately that wild horse program officials may not want to look too closely at Davis. The agency has more wild horses than it knows what to do with, they say, and Davis has become a relief valve for a federal program plagued by conflict and cost over-runs.
"They are under a lot of pressure in Washington to make numbers,” said a BLM corral manager who did not want his name used because he feared retribution from the agency’s national office. “Maybe that is what this is about. They probably don't want to look too careful at this guy."
******
Wild horses embody the mythic West: Painted Indian war ponies and the cavalry mounts that chased them, pony express runners and the tough partners of cowboys.
At the turn of the 20th Century, they numbered in the millions, but most were rounded up, slaughtered, and used for pet food or fertilizer, until by 1970, there were only 17,000 left.
In 1971, Congress stepped in to save the remaining herds, passing a law [3] that declared wild horses “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West” and made it a crime for anyone to harass or kill wild horses on most federal land. The law tasked the departments of Interior and Agriculture with protecting the animals still roaming the range.
Dave Philipps / ProPublica
Tom Davis at his corrals in La Jara, Colo.
In a sense, the Bureau of Land Management -- the part of the Interior Department assigned to oversee the wild horse program -- succeeded in this a bit too well. Protected horses naturally began to reproduce and by 1983 there were an estimated 65,000 horses and burros on the range, competing for resources with cattle and native wildlife.
In the name of maintaining a sustainable balance, the BLM began removing horses from the wild. It now rounds up about 9,400 horses a year, which has kept the wild population at around 35,000.
The captured horses are put up for adoption. Almost anyone can have one for as little as $125 as long as they sign a contract promising not to sell it to slaughter.
Adoptions kept pace with round ups until investigations in the late 1980s and 1990s showed that many adopters, including several BLM employees, had turned a quick profit by selling the horses to slaughterhouses. To discourage such re-sales, the BLM began holding the title of sale for a year. Today the agency says it visits almost every adopter for a “compliance check” within six months to make sure horses are well cared for.
The restrictions protected horses, but discouraged adoptions, a trend compounded more recently by a bad economy and soaring hay prices.
Today, only one in three captured horses finds a home. The rest go into a warren of tax payer-funded corrals, feed lots and pastures collectively known as “the holding system.” Since horses often live 20 years after being captured, the holding population has grown steadily for decades from 1,600 in 1989 to more than 47,000. There are now more wild horses living in captivity than in the wild.
For decades, government auditors [4] and wild horse welfare advocates have warned that the policy of capturing and storing horses is unsustainable and have pushed for the BLM to use fertility controls, introduce predators or expand wild horse territories, but the agency has made little progress toward these goals. In the first half of this year, for example, it treated fewer than half as many wild horses with a birth control drug than was planned.
"I think they are caught in an old way of doing things,” said John Turner, an endocrinologist at University of Toledo who specializes in wild horse fertility control. “Once they round up the horses, I don't think they like to treat and release. They would rather remove them."
Driven by the cost of caring for unwanted wild horses, the annual price tag of the program has ballooned from $16 million in 1989 to $76 million today.
Cost pressures prompted Congress to pass a last-minute rider to a 2004 law directing the BLM to sell thousands of old or unadoptable wild horses for $10 a head without restrictions -- even for slaughter -- but the agency has not done so, fearing public outrage.
Instead, since then, the BLM has been selling horses, but requiring buyers to sign contracts [5] saying they will “not knowingly sell or transfer ownership of any listed wild horse and or burro to any person or organization with an intention to resell, trade, or give away the animal for processing into commercial products." Violating the agreement is a felony, but there are no compliance checks similar to those done when horses are adopted.
Even when priced at less than a few bales of hay, these horses had little appeal: Sales dropped [6] from 1,468 in 2005 to 351 in 2008.
To explore other options for reducing the number of horses in holding, top BLM officials gathered for weekly closed-door meetings from July to October 2008. According to meeting minutes obtained by the Conquistador Equine Rescue & Advocacy Program, they considered selling thousands of animals for slaughter and even large-scale euthanasia, but concluded such actions would enrage animal-welfare activists to the point they might "threaten the safety of our facilities and our employees."
No clear plan emerged.
As the wild horse program’s situation grew increasingly dire, a new option came knocking: Tom Davis.
******
Davis, 64, a plain-spoken man with a sun-beaten brow, makes his living hauling livestock, but says reselling wild horses now accounts for a substantial part of his income.
By his own account, he has worked around horses all his life -- on racetracks, on ranches, and even rounding up wild horses for slaughter before the 1971 law put a stop to the practice.
For most of that time, he has lived in the tiny town of La Jara, in Colorado’s mountain-ringed San Luis Valley, just down the road from Ken Salazar, the former U.S. Senator who now heads the Department of the Interior.
“When my dad was alive we farmed their land,” Davis said of the Salazar family. “I like them. I do business with them. I do quite a bit of trucking for Ken.”
(Salazar did not respond to repeated interview requests for this story.)
On a warm morning in May, Davis gave a rambling two-hour interview on the 13-acre spread of corrals and truck lots where he lives.
Leaning against the fence of a muddy corral where a half dozen horses nibbled hay, wearing dusty overalls, Davis gave a simple reason for becoming the BLM’s main buyer.
"I love wild horses to death,” he said. “It's like an addiction. For some it's drugs, for me it's horses."
According to BLM records, Davis first contacted the program in January 2008. Documents obtained from the agency show he filled out the application [7] to become a buyer over the phone, aided by Spencer, the BLM’s sales director, who wrote in his answers to questions on the form. (A BLM spokesman said in an email that agency employees often did this in the program’s early days, but no longer do.)
Under a question concerning Davis’ intended use of the animals, Spencer wrote “use for movies.” He later told other BLM employees he sold the horses to Mexican movie companies to use on film shoots.
Under a question about what type of horses Davis preferred, the application noted he would take males or females, so long as they were big.
At the bottom of the application, Spencer wrote that she and Davis had “Discussed goal of providing a good home and making sure none of the horses end up at slaughter plants.” A few weeks later, the BLM sent Davis 36 wild horses from its Cañon City, Colo., holding corral.
That was the only load the BLM sent Davis in 2008, records show. But in 2009 -- a few months after the meetings about the holding crisis and two weeks after Salazar became head of the Interior Department -- the agency started sending him truckload after truckload, from all over the West. Soon he was by far their biggest customer.
Davis bought 560 horses in 2009, another 332 animals in 2010, 599 more in 2011, and 239 in the first four months of 2012, agency records show. While most BLM buyers purchase one or two horses at a time, Davis averages 35 per purchase and has bought up to 240 at a time.
The animals came from the mountains of California and Wyoming, the mesas of Colorado and Utah, and the deserts of Nevada and Oregon. Many had lived for decades in the wild: Mature band stallions and resilient mares of every color descended from the first American horses.
Davis has paid the BLM a total of $17,630 for the animals, far less than BLM has expended to provide them – the agency estimates it costs $1,000 to roundup a wild horse and records show it has paid as much as $5,000 per truckload to ship them to Davis. Similar horses that are not acquired from the BLM and can legally be sold for slaughter fetch $300,000 to $600,000 on the open market, according to sales prices from regional livestock auctions.
Some BLM corral managers said in interviews they felt uneasy shipping so many horses to a single buyer, and one they knew so little about, but said such decisions weren’t up to them.
"That all happens in Washington," one said, echoing the comments of many. "We are just peons. We do what we are told."
Davis said BLM employees occasionally asked where his horses ended up, but said he tells them it’s “none of your damn business.”
"They never question me too hard. It makes 'em look good if they're movin' these horses, see?" he said. "Every horse I take from them saves them a lot of money. I’m doing them a favor. I’m doing the American people a favor."
******
So what happened to the wild horses Davis purchased from the BLM?
The agency can’t say for sure. It does not hold onto the titles of wild horses acquired through its sale program as it does with horses that are adopted. Officials also have no process for following up to make sure buyers use animals as they claim they will in applications.
In the interview at the ranch, Davis said he had found most of the mustangs “good homes” on properties mostly in the southeastern states. Asked if he would provide records of these sales, he responded, “Ain’t no way in hell.”
Other people who find homes for rescue horses in the region say they rely heavily on advertising and web sites to connect with buyers. Davis does not appear to do so.
“I’ve never heard of him,” said David Hesse, who runs Mustang and Wild Horse Rescue of Georgia [8]. “If he said he is finding homes for that many old, untamed mustangs, I’m skeptical. The market is deader than dead. I have trouble finding homes for even the ones that are saddle-broken. Wild ones? No way.”
On some sales applications, Davis has said he sells horses to graze on land used for oil and gas drilling in Texas, but oil industry experts contacted for this story said they had never heard of such a practice.
According to brand inspection documents [9] required by Colorado when livestock is sold or shipped more than 75 miles, Davis and his wife say they have sent 765 animals with BLM wild horse brands to a sparsely populated stretch of arid brush country along the Mexico border in Kinney County, Texas. (The records do not give specific addresses where animals were sent, but identify small towns, such as Spofford, as their destination.)
It’s impossible to confirm that the horses actually arrived there or to know where they might have gone next, however, because Texas is one of the few Western states that do not require brand inspections when horses are moved or sold.
Just south of Kinney County is Eagle Pass, a border town that isthe only crossing for horses going to slaughter in Mexico for hundreds of miles.
There have been no horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. since 2007, when Congress barred funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture horse meat inspectors. Since then horse slaughter has been outsourced. A 2011 report by the General Accountability Office [10] found the export of horses for slaughter to Mexico shot up 660 percent after the ban.
In Eagle Pass, as at other crossings, slaughter horses are checked by USDA veterinarians. A USDA spokeswoman refused to make veterinarians available for interviews, but confirmed that vets sometimes see wild horses bearing the BLM brand in slaughter export pens.
Brand documents leave almost 1,000 of Davis’s wild horses unaccounted for. That means they should still be within 75 miles of his residence -- if he has complied with state law.
Asked if this was the case, Davis first said the horses were still on 160 acres of land he leases from the state of Colorado. Then he said some had been shipped out of state without brand inspections, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 18 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
"Since when is anything in this country done legal?" Davis said in a phone interview.
******
Had BLM officials inquired further about Davis, they might have found reason to question his plans for wild horses.
Davis is a vocal proponent of slaughtering wild horses in the holding system, which he considers a waste of resources. During the interview at his home, he said he would purchase far more horses if the BLM allowed him to resell them to so-called “kill buyers.”
“They are selling me mere hundreds now,” he said. “If they sold me 50,000, I guarantee I could do something with them. I would go to Canada. I would go to Mexico.”
Davis has close friends who export horses for slaughter, including Dennis Chavez, whose family runs one of largest export businesses in the southwest. In 1984, when Davis authored “Be Tough or be Gone [11],” a self-published book about a horseback ride he took from Mexico to Alaska, he dedicated it to Chavez’s father, Sonny Chavez.
Also, despite the obstacles that impede U.S. horse slaughterhouses, Davis said he has been trying to drum up investors to open a slaughter plant in Colorado.
He said he had approached pet food companies to buy the meat and asked Ken Salazar’s brother, John Salazar, who is the head of the Colorado Department of Agriculture, to help him get a grant to finance the business. John Salazar declined to help Davis, and so far the slaughterhouse venture has not gone forward.
“How can the BLM say with a straight face they are protecting wild horses when they deal with this guy?” said Leigh, of Wild Horse Education.
Animal welfare advocates have raised concerns about Davis’ purchases, but they say federal officials paid little attention.
In late 2010, the BLM rounded up 255 horses in the Adobe Town wild horse area [12] in Wyoming. A local loose knit group of advocates had been photographing the herd for years. After the round-up, group members called BLM officials, looking to adopt a few of the animals, particularly an old stallion they had named Grey Beard [13].
They were told that the horses had been claimed by an anonymous buyer who planned to resell them to large landowners looking for agricultural tax exemptions. The advocates tried to learn more about the buyer, but Spencer refused to give his name, citing privacy policies.
According to interviews and agency emails, group members told Spencer that anyone buying that many horses at once had to be a kill buyer.
Sandra Longley, one of the advocates, said in an email to another advocate that Spencer had assured her that the buyer in question had a long relationship with the BLM and was “above reproach.”
A BLM spokesman said Spencer did not recall the conversation.
According to BLM records, most of the horses were sold to Davis.
Warnings from advocates about Davis do not appear to have prompted the BLM to reconsider selling to him.In fact, internal agency email shows that officials actively turned to Davis to absorb freshly rounded-up horses so they wouldn’t end up in the overloaded holding system.
In January, the manager of the agency’s corral in Burns, Ore., emailed superiors in Washington, D.C., to ask what to do with 29 mares, almost all of which were pregnant. Spencer replied that Davis would take them.
In March, a corral manager emailed Spencer to say he had 92 “nice horses” just rounded up in High Rock, Calif., and to ask if Davis could take some of the geldings.
A day later Spencer replied, “Davis told me that if the geldings are in good shape he will be able to place them into good homes.”
“How many would Mr. Davis want to buy?” the corral manager asked Spencer. “And are there any specifics that he is looking for?”
“He said he’d be interested in all of them, no specifics,” Spencer replied.
Spencer said in an interview she is under no pressure to approve buyers with questionable backgrounds and feels confident that “we do not sell to people we feel are going to do bad things to the horses.”
When asked about Davis, she said he had been thoroughly checked out and she had confidence in him. More generally, she said that if there were problems with a buyer, she would know.
“People watch where our horses go and the brands are very distinctive,” she said. “If things were going on, we would get a call.”
Davis’ most recent purchase was in April, when he bought 106 animals. Since then, the agency may have opened an inquiry into what he has done with horses bought from the BLM. In June, an agency investigator contacted this reporter seeking information about him. This month, however, the BLM assistant special investigator in Santa Fe (the contact supplied by the agency on this matter) said he was "unable to confirm or deny" that the BLM is investigating Davis.
Animal welfare advocates say the agency’s reliance on Davis is just another indication of how the wild horse program and its overburdened holding system have been mismanaged.
“He is just a symptom of the train wreck that is the Wild Horse and Burro program,” said Ginger Kathrens, director of the horse advocacy group The Cloud Foundation, based in Colorado Springs. “They just warehouse more and more horses and create their own crisis. Then, after they run the program into the ground, they have to find ways out of it. It is a whole unnatural ridiculous system run amok. And who pays the ultimate price? Wild horses.”
This report, "All the Missing Horses," first appeared at ProPublica.org.
To contact Dave Philipps about this story, email him at horse@propublica.org.
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Leave a Comment:
What there not saying at all is that the BLM is doing this not because there are too many horses but that the oil companies want to explore for oil in these areas and since these animals are in protected areas.Hey lets just get rid off them! DRILL BABY DRILL! An indian chief said long ago You will not be happy until you have killed all the buffalo, caught all the fish, polluted all the lakes and streams and cut down the last tree!
What does this have to do with drilling for oil? You can drill for oil & not upset the habitat. These horses are breeding & eating themselves out of house & home. They need their numberes reduced. Butcher them & feed them to people that need the food. I hunt, sometimes we kill more feral hogs than we can eat & the meat is donated to homeless shelters & the needy. At least I know the meat is used the way it is supposed too.
I have no problem at all with the thought of eating horse. Especially after I read: "There are now more wild horses living in captivity than in the wild." What better to do with them than to feed the hungry? Or do people think it's more "humane" to force wild horses to live in captivity all their lives? How would YOU like to live in captivity your whole life? They are animals, and therefor made of meat. Let us eat!
76 million bucks a year down the drain (or horse gullet, at least), or revenue, food, and the end of suffering for the animals... Gee, sounds like a pretty tough choice.
BLM losses FAR MORE running cattle.
We were taught in college that castrating the male horses does no good: the females go into heat anyway and eventually die if they're not mated. Hence, the birth control pellet they inject the females with through their abdominal wall; it keeps them from going into heat. Has anyone else heard of horses dying if not mated?
Horses tend to destroy any bit of land they're left on for long. I see more poor horse ownership issues than I care to, mainly in the form of bare-stripped acreages and hoof-trampled riparian areas. I'm all in favor of reducing the horse population in general because of this.
Horses do not die from not breeding them. For real this is what college's are teaching, no wonder our kids are stupid. Horses will over graze if left on small acreage but we are talking about THOUSANDS of acres PUBLIC LANDS. One herd management area could run 350 horses and consist of 120,000 acres PLUS and now lets put 10,000 Plus cattle on the same range who do you think is going to destroy the land????? It cost far more to run the cattle then the horses. Please read what the BLM charges these cattle @!$%#s and what it cost The BLM to run the cattle You will be beyond pissed
WOW the comments here blow me away allot of you people have no clue that the BLM is run by Cattle mongers and that the BLM is systematically killing off Mustang's it supposed to protect. It cost far more to run the cattle on PUBLIC land than the mustangs and they cause FAR more DAMAGE than the horses. People You need to educate yourselfs.
Karennr1 - This is the textbook "two wrongs make a right" argument of feral livestock/horse supporters. Both species cause damage to the land and native species and they BOTH need to go.
There are numerous places in the west where there are no cattle (some wildlife refuges and National Parks) and all the damage is from feral horses. There were many burros in Grand Canyon NP and when they finally removed them native bighorn made a dramatic comeback.
Eventually, the feral horse population needs to go to 0. Whether that be now or later.
Much of the stock collected (culled) by the BLM has little more than slaughterhouse value to begin with. Compound this condition with the cost of feed and upkeep for the animals and you have a negative worth and continued expense. Left on the range, these same animals are a liability that contributes to the problems of overgrazing. Overall, this situation is in bad need of remediation, but the approach formalized by the government's force of bureaucratic "minds" is as unacceptable as the situation allegedly being addressed. The allotment system of grazing on federal lands is at least partially responsible for this and also needs to be seriously revised.
in 100 years after we will have overwhelmed the environment and consume most of the resources that this planet offered us, Horse meat will be the least controversial meat served at the dinner table...
I read the article, and it is a truly sad situation. I am a voter, a taxpayer, and a horse owner! The government is supposed to have 100% transparency, however, it appears Salazar is using the Americans fields as his very own monetary playground! Wonder how much of this money goes into his bank account, per pound from his neighbor, Davis.
Many of these comments have to be the saddest, most immature, egotistical, heart wrenching, poorest, uneducated comments I have ever read. I can only wonder what people in other countries think of American's attitudes toward something as spectacular as American Mustangs. Guess it doesn't matter, it appears they will soon be another book on a shelf or movie in a theater. I don't have the solution to fix the over population problem, but it is my opinion that if there is a rule, regulation, law on the books, then that law should be followed regardless of who thinks they are above it. Surely many of these horses can be gelded and returned to their lives, implants placed in the mares, and no, mares do not die from not being bred! That is the most asinine thing I have ever heard. As a mater of fact many actually stop cycling regularly if they are not in close proximity to a stallion. Eventually the population will dwindle down to nothing without help from the slaughter industry.
But to say that the horse industry collapsed due to the slaughterhouses closing in the United States, is an issue entirely of itself. The horse industry collapsed because every fool in a 50 mile radius has the most AWESOME, exceptional stud horse and band of mares that exists and believes their junk horses are worth their weight in gold, the economical crash created in 2009, and the drought that has taken over the midwest region. Most people are just lucky to be putting food on the table daily without the added expense of feeding an animal, large or small.
Mustangs will not have the opportunity to find themselves rehomed because we are all trying to rehome the domestic junk that the American people WILL NOT stop breeding (and yes, I blame the registration associations AQHA, APHA, AHA, etc.)! I am not under any circumstance in favor of horse slaughter for any reason! It is the most vile act of inhumane indecency and barbarism that has existed in mankinds blood thirsty quest!
Oh and the commenter that asked if you could go to Hell for eating horses, it is a possibility, hence...Leviticus 11:3 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud.
So what do you see as the solution for the 47,000 horses currently in holding pens?
The Bible also says not to eat pigs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAbptCIH7S4 Have you ever eaten pork products? Yes? Then don't pull that.
Feral horses are unnatural and invasive. They must be eliminated. Preferably through humane ways instead of starvation.
wild horse's ... why is it the BLM will sell horse's & burros to this "A-Hole" for $10.00 each , but if I go to a BLM wild horse auction the minimum starting bid is $125 + fees.... what a bunch of crap.
What is the problem? The herd grew too large, and so they are being culled - what is wrong with selling them for slaughter?
I'm amazed at how many people want to hide their heads in the sand about the real issue here. It's money, it's <$14 a year/per head of cattle to graze on BLM lands. Several of the BLM leadership are cattle ranchers. People on the board of the Wild Horse and Burro committee are horse slaughter advocates. It's simple if you open your eyes. Its all about greed. Cattle ranchers are making millions raising their beef on your land for pennies and then charging you big bucks for that range/grass fed steak. What we need to do is raise the grazing price and maybe we won't have so big of a fight to keep cattle off of land allotted for federally protected animals.
Horse slaughter isn't the answer to this problem. Calling out the BLM on their shoddy practices is. Let's leave the horses alone. They aren't the problem. Or open a channel for the public to support grazing rights for horses. At $14 a year per head, I'd be game to support more than a few. I'm sure others would too. Fair is fair, after all.
FYI: Current wild horses are a reintroduced native species. Wild horses originated in North America millions of years ago.
It's also been proven that wild horses do not cause the damage to BLM lands that domestic animal grazing causes. This article with references to BLM studies is eye opening:
Duh he sells them to Mexico and they get slaughtered. Why are they all pretending not to know anything?
This makes me mad as he11! Leave therse horses alone!! They deserve to roam free and that is exactly what they will do. I would picket Washington DC myself to help these horses.
Since there has been an allegation that a contractor has violated the terms of the agreement as well as a BLM policy requirement, the BLM is obligated to thoroughly investigate the allegation and not blow it off. The matter should be turned over to the OIG. Federal personnel are REQUIRED to act with due diligence in monitoring grants and contracts and can be held personally liable financially as well as being subject to disciplinary actions including termination.
Its unfortunate the article started out with the premisethat there is an overpopulation of wild horses on public lands. This is a BLM myth that has been pushed forward year after year with no reliable proof.
In the last decade as more and more people and organizations go out and do counts themselves, coming up with numbers vastly lower than the BLM, it has become clear that public lands politics has more to do with why horses are removed from areas - that Congress set aside for them in 1971, where they were supposed
to be given priority in managing the eco-system - than actual scientific decision making. Whether you agree with slaughter or not, or like horses or not, the fact that our public lands ( that belong to you and me, the taxpayer) are managed so poorly, lacking in science and favors the few who have the money to pay for lobby firms should make us feel outraged. Given the war over who is going to benefit from public lands, it would be prudent to stick up for the horses, which by law have a right to be there. If the horses go, so goes our rights to have a say over our public lands which are being gobbled up by big money interests.
Horse meat on its own is really quite tasty. During major holidays in Khazakhstan, guests traditionally dine on horse knuckles. I've dined on horse meat in Holland, where horse meat is bought in specialty butcher shops. Germans often use it use as the meat in traditional sauerbraten. For my taste, horse is best consumed in salami. The best grades of Italian and Hungarian hard salami typically contain about 10% horse meat mixed with 90% pork and then cured. It is amazing that one would be squeamish about eating horse, which are quite clean in their life style as compared to swine.
Before I spout off, let me list my credentials on the topic: B.S. in Biology, honors thesis entitled "Landscape and population level effects of Feral Horse grazing in the Owyhee Mountains", wild horse adopter since 2001, wild horse trainer, BLM WH&B program volunteer, WH Foster program founder.
There is a lot that needs to be understood about this issue before any suggestions should be made. FIrst and foremost, the BLM is a government agency and quite obviously not above corruption, especially given the complexity of their wild horse problems, however not every BLM official is in it just to make money and screw wild horses (or ranchers) out of public land so lets leave blanket statements regarding people's integrity out of this--the bottom line here is that there is an overabundance of horses and a severe lack of funding to deal with them appropriately. Many people have pointed out that the BLM needs to make the horses more accessible to the public and lower adoption prices--the BLM ships these horses nationwide to adoptions so that the public has access to them and also posts internet adoptions regularly. These animals can literally be taken home for free in some cases, the problem is that in this economy, nobody wants the burden of an unregistered animal that cannot be resold even when trained, let alone shown in any serious competitive arenas. Further, 1200 lb feral animals are dangerous and many people are not prepared for the amount of work it takes to train and house these animals. Public education is the key to encouraging adoption but the BLM simply doesn't have the funding to do it adequately. If anybody would like to get involved, I strongly encourage you to visit BLM Idaho's wild horse page, the wild horse director in Boise does a fantastic job of raising awareness and working with the public to get animals adopted.
The reason wild horses are protected in the first place is not because they are true north american wildlife--they are feral, reintroduced animals that stem originally from the Spanish conquistador's horses that came here in the 15th and 16th centuries, and later from pioneer and ranch horses that were lost or turned loose in informal attempts at animal husbandry. They have very few natural predators so they can reproduce at a surprising rate, left unchecked their populations can double every 4-5 years. Currently the populations are managed in specific areas deemed "herd management areas (HMA)." Each HMA has been assessed by a team of biologists--and not just BLM employees either, so that it's maximum holding capacity for horses, sheep and cattle has been assessed and divided into Animal Unit Months, the BLM regularly monitors these areas and their watersheds to make sure that they are healthy and adjusts grazing schedules as well as wild horse round ups accordingly. Wild horse populations are rounded up periodically using helicopters and the best breeding stock is returned to the range while adoptable horses (younger animals) are put up for adoption, very old or unhealthy animals go to long term holding. Further, the BLM treats many of the breeding mares with a safe, long lasting, injectable form of birth control called PZP which helps lower birth rates. The round ups are done as humanely as possible--foals do not run until their feet fall off, I've watched several of them. It is not ideal, but the BLM has few other options--if left alone, the horses WILL multiply to the point of destroying the range and eventually starve themselves as well as the wildlife, even if cattle were removed from the range equation, the land simply cannot sustain that kind of population growth long term. Our rangelands did evolve with large grazers such as horses and cattle however, so they can sustain them to some extent. For those of you who suggested "cutting off their balls" this is completely impractical. Yes it is relatively cheap to geld one or two horses, but when you have to round up thousands of WILD horses, anesthetize them and geld them on the range, that would be unbelievably costly. And for the record, horses that go to long term holding ARE gelded.
I agree that the story of wild horses has been romanticized, but for good reason. The ancestors of today's wild horses helped to build and shape this country and it is unfair to just round them up and send them to slaughter simply because they were born into an unfortunate economy and they make for 'good eating.' Let's not forget why wild horses are protected in the first place--Wild Horse Annie lobbied long and hard to prevent these animals from going to slaughter and the country agreed with her, they are living symbols of our the historic and pioneer spirit of the west. Just because we realized that they are a drain on our resources doesn't mean we abandon them and send them to their death whether it's here in America or some brutal, sketchy Mexican slaughter house. Rather than sit at your computers and bitch about Obama or Salazar or your taxes, I suggest everyone do some actual research and understand the complexities of the issue and try to figure out how to be part of the solution.
@ KayMS2: wow, for someone with a biology degree you seemed to have skipped the part about where horses actually originated.
and, our Public range-lands used to support, thousands, THOUSANDS of buffalo and horses and deer and elk, etc, etc, just fine, UNTIL THE CATTLEMEN got here and started dictating their agenda over proper wild lands management.
and, Holy Cr*p, again, our range-lands did not evolve with cattle on them, and cattle are not buffalo.
What the hell. It is better to have a horse put down then to send it to slaughter.
The Bureau of Land Management is a joke and don't want to use the simple feed added
birth control on the wild horse because it would cut out their job. I will say
it makes me sick to see a horse rescue from Georgia approve of slaughter. For
this lady from Georgia in the video you need to see in person just how a
slaughter house works and as soon as I learn who you are I will be posting to
all the rescue groups I know and asking them to spread the word on your
feeling. How can you call yourself a rescuer when you are willing to send
horses to slaughter? Would you send your dog or cat to be slaughter or would
you have them put down in a humane way? I mean after all someone somewhere eats
dogs and cats and that would take care of all the unwanted cats and dogs as well.
I would rather go out back and shoot my horses myself then to see them go to a
slaughter house. By doing that I would know they had a quick death and not have
to see them packed in double deck trailers made for cows and made to travel
100's and 100’s of miles with no food or water and then shot 4 or 5 times with
a nail gun in the head and cut up while they are still kicking.
We do not eat horses in the US and we should not look to the slaughter of horses
and selling their meat as a way to control the problem. If we do then we are no
better than the owner that lets a horse starve to death in the stall. It makes
me sick to know that a rescue in Georgia feels that it is ok to send horses to
slaughter and I am now look to find out the name of this rescue so that I can
post a link of this video to insure that they no longer get any donation. It is
just sick that a horse rescue can approve of sending horses to slaughter.
These horses went to slaughter, anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. Slaughter is not humane, just watch the undercover slaughter plant videos from this year or look at the thousand pages of photographic evidence that USDA had when slaughter plants were open in the US. Just because these horses used to live wild, that doesn't mean they were never given drugs banned in food animals so there is still a public health risk. They do not double in population every 4 yrs, that is a BLM/rancher myth used to remove horses from land they'd rather put livestock on. When natural predators are not killed to make ranchers happy, the populations remain very stable. There are too many in holding because BLM continues to rip them off their protected herd areas at alarming rates. BLM are ranchers first and foremost, not land mgrs or wild horse & burro program mgrs. in order to use the land for livestock or extractive industries they stampede way too many horses off the range so they have created their own problem.
Those saying we need more game animals - lets compare numbers. There are hundreds of thousands of most of the popular game animals yet less than 30,000 wild horses living in the wild. Livestock on public lands 3.5million, livestock on public land in protected wild horse areas approx 400,000-500,000 AUM. The livestock program on public lands costs $500million, wild horse program $80million (that would be lower if BLM cuts roundups by 50-75%). And those welfare livestock we're subsidizing are not feeding Americans - 97% are exported. We're letting welfare ranchers make millions.
Horses evolved in North America starting over 55 million yrs ago. The Horse as we know it, came along approx 1.8million yrs ago. After humans started appearing in greater numbers on the continent, horse populations decreased. Since there is absolutely no evidence of a mass die-off, many think that humans hunted the horses and pushed remaining herds across the land bridge to Asia. They did the same thing to bison so it's not unheard of. Or native people kept horses in semi-wild herds. So what if horses were reintroduced native species? If humans survived here during the time the horses were gone, it's even more likely horses would have survived if not hunted to extinction. Wild horses evolved to live here, through major climate changes over 55 million yrs. Virtually all of the species that anyone would regard as "native" to North America today went through these very same alternating warm and cold periods with no trouble because they were in fact adapted to the roller-coaster climate system that has prevailed here throughout the Pleistocene. They are truly wild and are designed to live wild - because their brains have not changed as some domesticated species do, it doesn't take long for them to revert back to being capable of surviving in the wild even if they were domestics turned loose. And domestics turned loose only 100 yrs ago were usually less tame than today's domestic horses. But geldings are different because they have no need to form the family bands that intact wild horses do.
The non‐native, feral, and exotic designations given by people and agencies are not merely reflections of their failure to understand modern science, but also a reflection of their desire to preserve old ways of thinking to keep alive the conflict between a species (wild horses) with no economic value anymore (by law) and the economic value of commercial livestock.
@ MarieG99: agreed, thank you.
Why is this a problem? Horses taste delicious. When I used to live in Italy, my grandmother used to cook me horse meat. Oh, so because little Suzy named the animal, now I can't eat it? I have canine teeth for a reason. Horse flesh is one of those reasons. That's some good eating.
growing up we use to eat horse all the time,, nothing wrong with it, i say sell it at the super market, maby it will bring the price of beef down
So many ignorant comments here... our wild and free mustangs just don't stand a chance. First and foremost, hear me now, understand me later - there is no overpopulation of mustangs, there are no excess mustangs - excess is the word BLM uses to legally remove them. They fabricate excess. Only excess mustangs are allowed to be removed from the wild. Once you understand that there are no excess mustangs, and go ahead and count how many large elk and bighorns are in these same states, you'd realize that in actuality mustangs should be considered an endangered species there numbers are so low. No, this is a land grab, the government grabbing their lands (much in the same way they did the Indians) and handing it over to special interests, like welfare ranchers that cost taxpayers near $1 billion annually to subsidize what is merely a 'tradition' and 'lifestyle' - beef from our public lands contributes less than 1% to the nation's beef production. There's probably 150 cows per 1 mustang on public lands - and they all blame the mustangs for range damage done by domestic livestock.
And of course this guy is selling our horses to slaughter on our dime and making huge profits. Today's BLM and Ken Salazar's DOI has a "DON'T ASK DON'T TELL" where our mustangs are concerned. The brutality of BLM round ups and "processing" and transporting all over the country - of wild animals that had never before been touched by human hands - are treated like rodeo livestock.
It would be kinder and more humane for our corrupt government agencies (DOI/BLM) to just shoot these animals in the wild (like they did before we passed a law to "protect and preserve" them, rather than put them through ALL of this. Ah, but the public would never stand for that so these wild animals get jammed into trucks and hauled to "Texas" - which is the last place US horses go before that last ride to a Mexican slaughterhouse, so instead, with DOI/BLM's "DON'T ASK DON'T TELL" policy, it's all done through a back door and Mr. Davis here is laughing all the way to the bank, buying $10 mustangs and reselling them for $500. There aren't any "good homes" out there folks, the recession / depression, and tripled cost of hay, has led to horse rescues filled with adoptable trained riding horses. Mr. Davis, like all killer buyers, love to use those words "good homes" - that's killer speak for "slaughter" ..............
And *your* tax dollars are supporting this very profitable business for Mr. Davis. You're paying well over $1000 for an animal you're selling to Davis for $10 - so he can resell it for $500 to a "good home."
And FYI - the horse is native to this continent, fossil evidence of fully evolved horses, making mustangs a reintroduced native species and defined by US law as "wild". Bighorn sheep by the way, touted by the government to be so native, is native to Eurasia not North America. Why? A bighorn hunting permit can cost a hunter $10,000. That makes it "native".
@ TerryW-729800: agreed, thank you.
Wild sheep migrated across the Bering land bridge over 750,000 years ago.
They aren't "mustangs" anymore. They are inbred, dirty animals that do more suffering than anything else.
Well I own one of those inbred, dirty animals and my 16 year old daughter competes him successfully. You are full of it Medusa..
Every feral horse is a member of an overpopulation. Every other feral or domestic livestock animal on our arid western ranges is a member of an overpopulation. (Of course we are too.)
No one has really checked out the monstrous profits that Tom Davis is scamming.
And I would like to see real studies done on just how over-populated the American Mustang really is.
I have gentled horses back in my younger years - they are magnificent creatures. There is a solution to this problem - everyone give up their homes and let the wild animals have the country back - problem solved!
Alright, I know that isn't going to happen. Should we just let them be and see what happens? No, if we did that, they would quickly scalp the landscape, and a high percentage of the herd will die.
Sterilization would work - but have to be careful with that also - need to keep the gene pool high.
Unfortunately, we need to MANAGE them - although it hurts to do so. If there isn't anything that is going to be done (and we all know how government works - make the laws but don't enforce or follow them) - why not be upfront about it? Sell those animals for "consumable products" and all the money goes back to the group so they CAN support keeping the younger animals. Limit the numbers of animals being kept by BLM.
I say, if there is public outcry...tell the public to do something about it or shut up. We all want someone else to take care of things - either do something about it or don't complain. Get your friends together and raise money to take the animals in and care for them, house them etc. Oh wait, people don't have the time or money or facilities...just like the BLM?? Vicious circle I know. Like I said often the solution does not fit right in our hearts - but it must be done.
I have no more objection to eating horse than I do to eating pork, beef, or even lizards (if large enough to be economical).
Get the government out of my pocketbook and kitchen.
Mario69 and your friend Medusa754 and others like you, you are both dirty. Keep your filth out of my kitchen and pocketbook.
God this country is a mess. Full of wimps. Those horses are feral, jugheaded and so interbred that they aren't worth much but for meat. We have a 17% poverty rate of US HUMAN BEINGS we should be taking care of. I have had some fantastic horses in my life and I have rode 12 hour days for months, best part of my life has been looking at the world through the ears of a horse and putting them in stables is what is inhumane. All of these weekend drug store cowboys that buy a horse and then don't ride it and t hen stable them in tiny lots with no grass that is inhumane. There is X amount of grass and most people in this country like beef so you cull the herd rather it is horses or cows.
By your estimation, the wild horses should be slaughtered. Just because you rode horses, you are now an expert about them and their future. Since when is it okay for humans to overbreed and horses should be killed and fed to them and pay the ultimate price for our arrogance? Thank you for exposing your stupidity for all to see.
So now that some in the market are advocating eating horse meat, you suddenly want to preach to everyone that a 17% poverty rate exists in America?
You are a liar and the poverty rate is higher than that, and has been that way for 30 years. But it is a waste of time and money to people like you to count the true extent of poverty. So where have you been with all of your compassion in the last 30 years? The only answer you can think of 'jughead' is to feed poor people horse meat? By the way, when this country was doing fine, how come none of you felt like eating horse meat?
Not wild. Technically they are feral. Man (Spanish) brought the modern horse to America in the 1500s. No one seems to have a problem with trying to get rid of other species that man has brought to America. Nutria, fire ants, etc.
Before getting rid of a non-native species, make sure that they have not developed a beneficial relationship to their environment.