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  1. #1
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Interior's Ken Salazar, in video, threatens wild horses reporter

    By John M. GlionnaNovember 14, 2012, 11:27 a.m.


    An investigative journalist who has reported on the federal government’s alleged sale of hundreds of wild horses to a known kill-buyer has released a video of a face-off in which Interior Secretary Ken Salazar threatens to punch him during an impromptu interview.

    Dave Philipps, now a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette, conducted a two-minute interview with the cowboy-hat-wearing Salazar, a Democrat, at an event taking place at an Obama campaign office in Fountain, Colo., on Election Day.

    In September, Philipps' article for the online ProPublica investigative group claimed the Bureau of Land Management, which manages hundreds of millions of acres of public land in 11 states, was knowingly selling wild horses to a middleman who is thought to have taken them to Mexico for eventual slaughter.

    The ProPublica piece centered on Coloradan Tom Davis, who has purchased 1,700 wild horses from the federal government but can't produce documentation on what happened to them. Davis is a proponent of horse slaughter, which is illegal on wild horses roaming public lands. For two years, he has sought investors for a slaughterhouse, the story said. The piece also pointed out that Davis and Salazar are neighbors in Colorado.

    During the Election Day interview, much of which was videotaped and posted on YouTube, Philipps asks Salazar several questions, including the fate of the missing wild horses. Salazar, which the website Politico has reported will stay on for a second term in the Obama administration, said he didn’t know much about the case but understood that an investigation was being conducted.

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    "Let me just say, fact is, there are huge issues with wild horses and mustangs on the public domain and there is a major effort on the part of the Bureau of Land Management to make sure that a problem that has gone unaddressed for a very long time gets addressed and we are working on that very diligently," Salazar said, according to an audiotape of the interview being circulated by wild horse advocates.

    Moments after the brief exchange, according to the video and witnesses, Salazar approached Philipps, saying, "Don't you ever ... You know what, you do that again ... I'll punch you out."

    A Salazar spokesman said Tuesday that, "the secretary regrets the exchange."

    Ginger Kathrens, executive of the Cloud Foundation, a Colorado-based wild horse advocacy group, was present for the exchange.

    “You could see Salazar’s face tighten up on the question about the horses,” she told the Los Angeles Times. "Afterward, he walked away and I reached out to shake his hand. He brushed back by me and wouldn’t shake hands with me. He was in Dave’s face. He was very close to him. I half-expected him to pull a six-shooter out of his holster.”
    Critics have for years said the BLM was decimating the numbers of wild horses in Western states, influenced by the powerful livestock lobby that promotes the use of public land for cattle grazing.

    Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, said in a release that Salazar’s "duck and cover" isn’t acceptable:

    "That the man responsible for the federal government’s $80-million-a-year wild horse program doesn’t know or doesn’t care that it’s spiraling out of control is shocking,” the group said. "His Bureau of Land Management is tasked with protecting these horses, yet they’re being slaughtered in Mexico and the Secretary’s only solution appears to be to threaten reporters who try to hold him accountable.”

    Interior's Ken Salazar, in video, threatens wild horses reporter - latimes.com
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    All the Missing Horses: What Happened to the Wild Horses Tom Davis Bought From the Gov’t?



    A lone mustang who escaped the helicopters watches a Bureau of Land Management roundup in the Stone Cabin Valley in Nevada during the winter of 2012. (Dave Philipps)

    by Dave Philipps, Special to ProPublica, Sept. 28, 2012, 4:13 p.m.



    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 -- 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, 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."

    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 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.
    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 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 signcontracts 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 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."


    Tom Davis at his corrals in La Jara, Colo. (Dave Philipps)


    According to BLM records, Davis first contacted the program in January 2008. Documents obtained from the agency show he filled out the application 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.”




    A helicopter rounds up horses in the Stone Cabin Valley of Nevada in the winter of 2012. (Dave Philipps)


    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. “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 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 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,” 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 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.

    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.


    Freshly captured horses in the Stone Cabin Valley of Nevada wait in a BLM corral to be trucked to the holding system. (Dave Philipps)

    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.”

    All the Missing Horses: What Happened to the Wild Horses Tom Davis Bought From the Gov’t? - ProPublica
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  3. #3
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    INTERIOR SECRETARY THREATENS TO "PUNCH OUT" COLORADO SPRINGS REPORTER

    CLOUD FOUNDATION DIRECTOR SNUBBED BY SALAZAR

    Colorado Springs, Colo. (November 12, 2012) – On Election Day, at an enthusiastic gathering of Obama supporters in Fountain, Colorado; Dave Philipps, a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette, had just finished an interview with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar about his controversial policies for managing America’s wild horse populations. Just after Secretary Salazar answered final questions about the future safety of wild horses and he turned to leave the interview, he unexpectedly approached Phillips and told him, “If you set me up like this again, I’ll punch you out.” Standing nearby was Ginger Kathrens, Executive Director of the Cloud Foundation, a Colorado-based wild horse advocacy organization. “I was stunned by the Secretary’s rude and clearly hostile comment toward Dave,” said Kathrens.

    Kathrens, who had had been granted permission by an Interior law enforcement official to take pictures at the rally added, “ Salazar walked past me, refused to shake my hand, and told me, ‘You know, you should never do that.” It was unclear to Kathrens what he meant. “These threats would have been inappropriate coming from anyone, but the fact that it came out of the mouth of the Secretary of the Interior is alarming,” stated Kathrens. “I can’t believe that a top official in Obama’s cabinet could be so defensive.”

    Philipps’ interview with Salazar was a follow-up to a story he had written in September about the sale of wild horses to Tom Davis, a Colorado killer buyer who purchased over 1,700 wild horses from government holding facilities. The horses ended up in south Texas and it is believed they were trucked over the border to Mexican slaughterhouses. Secretary Salazar acknowledged that an investigation of Davis’ activities is currently underway.

    Salazar’s anti-wild horse stance came to light in 2004 during his successful run for the U.S. Senate. After a town hall meeting in Greeley, Colorado, wild horse advocate Barbara Flores asked him what he thought about our wild horses. Candidate Salazar responded, “They don’t belong on public lands.” Salazar vacated his Senate seat in 2008 to take his current position as Secretary of the Interior.

    The BLM removes far more horses from their legally designated home ranges than can be adopted out to the public. The massive roundups have resulted in the stockpiling of animals in government facilities and privately contracted ranches. Nearly twice as many wild horses are housed in these costly holding operations than currently roam free, leaving most wild herds under populated and vulnerable to inbreeding and die-off due to a lack of genetic diversity.

    “You know, this isn’t just about wild horses,” explains Kathrens. “America needs leaders in Washington, and the President needs cabinet members who respect citizens, respect the laws, value discussion and working toward mutual solutions. Ken Salazar displayed none of this on Tuesday.”

    http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/news-events-and-media/press-releases/287-interior-secretary-threatens-to-punch-out-colorado-springs-reporter

    West Douglas - Colorado's Wild Horses Need Your Help



    Multiple videos of the horses at this youtube link- they are beautiful.

    Last edited by Newmexican; 11-29-2012 at 08:57 PM.
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    Activists send letter denouncing wild horse slaughter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

    By Steamboat Today
    Wednesday, November 14, 2012


    Responding to a report by ProPublica that detailed the possibility wild horses were being slaughtered, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign delivered a letter with 25,130 signatures to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar demanding action.

    The letter seeks to stop the Bureau of Land Management from rounding up wild horses and selling them.

    It notes that the Department of the Interior launched an Office of Inspector General investigation, but there is no date for the findings to be released while the sale of horses continues.

    According to the ProPublica article, the BLM roundup program for wild horses is to keep populations stable on government lands. But as pens and stables used to house the horses became overcrowded — and attempts to adopt the horses out failed — the agency needed a way to relieve pressure on the system. Buyers like Colorado's Tom Davis were "willing to buy hundreds of horses at a time, sight unseen, for $10 a head," according to the article.

    In a release from the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, Suzanne Roy, director of the organization, is quoted as saying:

    Secretary Salazar owes the American people a guarantee that no more wild horses will end up in slaughterhouses. Instead of taking decisive action, Secretary Salazar has allowed the BLM to continue to roundup and stockpile thousands more wild horses removed from Western public lands. As the agency’s holding facilities for captured mustangs reach capacity, these cherished American icons are in real jeopardy of being slaughtered.
    The release also states that there are more wild horses now in holding facilities than on the open range:

    Under Secretary Salazar’s tenure, the BLM has rounded up and removed over 35,000 wild horses from their homes on the range on Western public lands. Only a third of these horses have been adopted. Most captured horses are warehoused in holding facilities. Currently, there are more wild horses in government holding facilities (50,000) than are left free on the range (32,000). Wild horses are removed by the thousands from public lands to make room for taxpayer-subsidized livestock grazing. Private livestock exceed wild horses on BLM lands by at least 50-1.
    The release links to this YouTube video, which claims to show BLM horses being unloaded as part of a shipment to a Mexico horse slaughter plant.
    Steamboat Today: Activists send letter denouncing wild horse slaughter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

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  5. #5
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    Feds rein in sales of wild horses

    Published January 06, 2013
    Associated Press



    • Sept. 14, 2010: Wild horses are seen in a herd in Corolla, N.C. (AP)


    CARSON CITY, Nev. – Sales of wild horses and burros will be restricted under new rules announced Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management after an investigation into the sale of more than 1,700 horses to a Colorado livestock hauler who supports the horse meat industry.

    "It is a response to that inquiry, which is being conducted right now by the Office of the Inspector General of the Interior Department," said Tom Gorey, BLM spokesman for the wild horse program in Washington, D.C.

    Wild horse advocates said the rules amount to "window dressing" and won't keep large numbers of mustangs out of the hands of so-called kill buyers.

    The inspector general is investigating what became of 1,777 horses sold since 2009 to Tom Davis. Wild horse advocates fear the animals were taken to Mexico for slaughter.

    Wild horses are protected under federal law, and selling them for slaughter is illegal.
    -
    "He's the biggest buyer among all of our buyers over the years," Gorey said of Davis. Since 2005, when the BLM first allowed people to buy horses in bulk as opposed to adopting them, the agency has sold 5,400 animals, Gorey said.

    An investigation of Davis' wild horse purchases was published by ProPublica in September.

    Gorey said the inspector general is "looking into all aspects of the sales to Davis, including the whereabouts of the horses."

    He said it's unknown when the investigation will be finished.

    Wild horses are protected under federal law, and selling them for slaughter is illegal.

    Davis signed agreements with the BLM promising none of the horses would be sold for slaughter, and he maintains he's done nothing wrong. Local authorities in Colorado also are investigating whether Davis violated brand inspection laws by shipping some horses out of state, according to published reports.

    Under the new rules, sales of wild mustangs and burros will be limited to no more than four within a six-month period unless prior approval is obtained from a BLM assistant director.

    Buyers also must describe where they intend to keep the animals.

    Requiring BLM approval for large sales won't protect mustangs, said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.

    Roy said it is "outrageous" to put the decision of who gets more than four horses "in the hands of the very same BLM managers who were exposed as being responsible" for wild horses ending up with buyers like Davis. She added the new policy allows the BLM "to look the other way after six months."

    Laura Leigh, an advocate with Wild Horse Education, said the BLM should rescind its policy that allows horse sales.

    "Sales authority itself may be unconstitutional, and until it's repealed, our wild horses will remain vulnerable to sale into the slaughter pipeline," Leigh said.

    About 37,000 wild horses roam Western states. About half are in Nevada.

    The BLM, which is charged with managing wild horses and burros, has struggled to keep populations on the range in check. Hundreds if not thousands of horses are rounded up yearly and placed for adoption or sent to long-term holding pastures to live out their days.

    Officials say there are now more horses in captivity -- more than 45,000 -- than remain on the range.

    From about 2005 until now, people who wanted 20 horses or more could buy them for $10 per horse and have them delivered by the BLM. Smaller numbers could be purchased for prices ranging from $25 to $75, said Heather Emmons, BLM spokeswoman in Reno.

    Under the new rules, sales of wild mustangs and burros will be limited to no more than four within a six-month period unless prior approval is obtained from a BLM assistant director.

    Buyers also must describe where they intend to keep the animals.

    Requiring BLM approval for large sales won't protect mustangs, said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.

    Roy said it is "outrageous" to put the decision of who gets more than four horses "in the hands of the very same BLM managers who were exposed as being responsible" for wild horses ending up with buyers like Davis. She added the new policy allows the BLM "to look the other way after six months."

    Laura Leigh, an advocate with Wild Horse Education, said the BLM should rescind its policy that allows horse sales.

    "Sales authority itself may be unconstitutional, and until it's repealed, our wild horses will remain vulnerable to sale into the slaughter pipeline," Leigh said.

    About 37,000 wild horses roam Western states. About half are in Nevada.

    The BLM, which is charged with managing wild horses and burros, has struggled to keep populations on the range in check. Hundreds if not thousands of horses are rounded up yearly and placed for adoption or sent to long-term holding pastures to live out their days.

    Officials say there are now more horses in captivity -- more than 45,000 -- than remain on the range.

    From about 2005 until now, people who wanted 20 horses or more could buy them for $10 per horse and have them delivered by the BLM. Smaller numbers could be purchased for prices ranging from $25 to $75, said Heather Emmons, BLM spokeswoman in Reno.

    "Most of the horses are older, and the majority would be sold for $25," she said.


    Read more: Feds rein in sales of wild horses | Fox News
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