Prosecutions sought in wild horse slaughters

Monday, Oct. 25, 1999 | 9:50 a.m.

The request stems from the Bureau of Land Management's announcement last month that nearly 600 wild horses wound up in slaughterhouses after being adopted.

The BLM is charged with managing the West's estimated 44,000 wild horses, about half of which are in Nevada. The agency routinely gathers some of the animals and puts them up for adoption to ease overpopulation.

"Whatever obstacles there may be to prosecuting these crimes, there could be no better case to pursue than these, where horses are slaughtered within days after they are titled," Howard M. Crystal, a lawyer for the Fund for Animals, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department.

"Yet there are no indications that any enforcement (by the BLM) is forthcoming."

Last week, Justice Department and BLM officials in Washington, D.C., said they were considering whether to prosecute owners who sold their mustangs for slaughter.

Of the 571 slaughtered horses, more than 180 were slaughtered within three months of the owners receiving title to them.

Under BLM rules, owners must hold the animals for a year before being granted full title.

Although owners are required to sign affidavits stating they won't sell the horses for slaughter under the penalty of perjury, the BLM has said it can't prosecute violators because of questions over how long the agreement is intended to last.

But Andrea Lococo, of the Wyoming-based Fund for Animals, said her group wants to see the titles for the slaughtered horses to determine if the owners violated their affidavits.

"We expect the BLM to pursue these cases vigorously in order to penalize violators and to serve as a deterrent to others," she said.

BLM spokeswoman Mary Knapp said her agency's lawyers would issue an opinion on the matter after an examination of title documents.

The provision designed to block owners from selling wild horses to slaughterhouses stems from a settlement in the Fund for Animals' 1997 lawsuit against the BLM.