Wild horse activists claim the Bureau of Land Management has failed to protect wild horses and are allegedly allowing them to be slaughtered for profit.
Earlier this year, the American Wild Horse Campaign claimed in an investigative report that the Bureau of Land Management's Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) is a "pipeline to slaughter." The report was backed by the New York Times.
The Times reported the BLM is essentially laundering wild horses straight into kill pens, livestock auctions that send the federally-protected horses to Canadian and Mexican slaughter plants.
"The evidence is there," AWHC Spokesperson Amelia Perrin said in an emailed statement. "Wild horses and burros are not only entering the slaughter pipeline as a result of the BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program, they are being abused and neglected by adopters unable or uninterested in providing them with a good home. It completely fails wild horses and burros. We’ve presented a comprehensive report and subsequent addendums to the report, and yet the Agency continues to ignore the scale of the issue and continues to promote the program."
Under the program, the BLM pays people $1,000 for each adopted horse and an individual can adopt up to four at a time. According to the AWHC, half of the incentive is paid upon adoption and the other half is paid when the horse's title is transferred a year later. Since the program began in March 2019, the numbers of wild horses in kill pens has increased dramatically.
"AWHC believes that cash incentives should be terminated," Perrin said. "There is no world in which paying people $1,000 to adopt a wild, untamed horse is a good idea. Every day that it continues, the BLM is sending more wild horses and burros into the slaughter pipeline. The BLM must also start enforcing the contracts that adopters sign and agree under penalty of criminal prosecution not to sell or give away the horses for slaughter. And they must start screening all adopters with background checks to ensure that people with criminal records of animal abuse or fraud are disqualified from adopting BLM animals."
For more information about the BLM program and the investigation, click here.
