The Fund for Animals has filed a response to
the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in United States
District Court, claiming that the BLM is still failing to
implement the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act
and the parties’ 1997 settlement agreement that intended
to stem the tide of adopted horses going to slaughter.
In a recent court hearing, Judge Howard McKibben told the
BLM that it is not working hard enough to implement “very
simple steps” to prevent adopted horses from ending up at
slaughterhouses. Judge McKibben asked the BLM to submit
more information within 60 days on the number of horses
slaughtered in the last two years and whether it has
prosecuted those cases, and to state for the record that it
will no longer title horses unless the adopter signs a sworn
attestation not to use the horse for slaughter.
In response to that directive, BLM has filed papers revealing
that the extent of its “investigations” into potential
violations of the attestation is to ask adopters whose horses
end up at slaughterhouses how their horses were disposed
of, and whether the adopter intended that the horse be
slaughtered. BLM revealed that, while at least 332 horses
removed from the wild and put up for adoption in the past
two years are already dead, including more than 90 horses
who were dead less than three months after the adopter
obtained title, BLM has initiated only a single prosecution for
violating the attestation.
Howard Crystal, an attorney representing The Fund, stated,
“Evidently, so long as adopters are not so foolish as to flatly
admit that they violated the attestation, that appears to be
the end of BLM’s inquiry regardless of the objective
circumstances suggesting that a horse ended up being
slaughtered only months or weeks following the transfer of
title.”
In the response filed by The Fund, the organization
suggested that the BLM “has offered nothing but smoke and
mirrors” in trying to convince the court that it is taking any
steps even to prevent people whose adopted horses were
slaughtered from adopting again. As evidenced by
slaughterhouse logs obtained by The Fund, this data is
readily available to BLM, and there is simply no reason for
BLM not to inquire about past adoptions or affirmatively
ensure that a prospective adopter’s previously titled horses
have not been slaughtered.
Andrea Lococo, Rocky Mountain coordinator for The Fund,
added, “The papers filed by the BLM have simply heightened
our concern that the agency is operating under a new ‘don’t
ask, don’t tell’ policy, avoiding the follow-up questions and
reasonable inquiries. These animals are America’s living
symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, and
they do not deserve to end up on European dinner tables.”
The 13-page response filed by The Fund is available by
calling 307-859-8840.
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