Judge asks BLM for records of wild horse slaughters, sanctions

Matt Kelley

Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2000 | 4:45 a.m.

WASHINGTON - A federal judge in Nevada has asked the Bureau of Land Management to tell him the number of adopted wild horses sold for slaughter despite their new owners' pledges not to do so.

U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben of Reno also asked the BLM to say how many of those cases agency officials recommended for prosecution. Those who adopt wild horses are required to sign a statement saying they do not plan to sell them to a slaughterhouse; someone who violated that pledge could be prosecuted for making a false statement to the government.

Justice Department lawyer Lyn Jacobs, representing the BLM, said federal officials were prosecuting one person for fraud for allegedly selling a wild horse after signing the no-sale pledge.

A lawyer for an animal-rights group said the agency needs to be tougher against those who sell wild horses to slaughterhouses, which send horse meat overseas for people to eat.

"No one is suggesting that hundreds of people are going to be prosecuted for these kinds of abuses," Howard Crystal, a lawyer for the Fund for Animals, said Tuesday. "But if you go prosecute a few people, it will let folks know that if they break the law, something will happen to them."

The BLM has said more than 500 wild horses have ended up in slaughterhouses after the agency began requiring the no-sale pledges two years ago. The agreement came after The Associated Press in 1997 exposed the continuing practice of sending wild horses to slaughter.

The BLM takes horses from overgrazed areas of federal land in the West and lets people adopt them for as little as $125. Adopters can take title to the animals after one year. Congress set up the adoption process in the 1970s after animal rights groups complained that thousands of wild horses were being rounded up and sold to slaughterhouses.

McKibben said at a Nov. 29 teleconference hearing that "it does not appear ... that there have been substantial violations by the BLM" of the lawsuit settlement that led to the no-sale pledges. Crystal said the BLM has not required every horse adopter to sign the pledge, but Jacobs said those problems have been fixed.

The judge said he thought the BLM was dragging its feet, however.

"It doesn't appear to me that the BLM has moved particularly quickly in a lot of these areas to develop forms, or take action in connection with the forms that would help ensure that the horses are not being slaughtered," said McKibben.

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On the Net:

BLM wild horse and burro program: http://www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov/

Fund for Animals: http://www.fund.org