Photo by Tony Stromberg
By Celeste Carlisle
By law, wild horses in holding that have been offered unsuccessfully for adoption 3 times, or that are over the age of 10, had been eligible for $25/head sales. Immediate titling for a sold animal is handed to the buyer, and protective provisions afforded to that horse under the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act dissolve in that moment. Buyers sign a bill of sale requiring that they “…agree not to knowingly sell or transfer ownership of any listed animals to any person or organization whose intent is to process the animals or their remains into commercial products or whose intent is to resell, trade, or give away the animals or their remains for processing into commercial products.” Proving intent, however, is extremely difficult. Many of you have been concerned and outraged at recently sold (sometimes having been handed title just the day before) wild horses and burros at known kill pens. Your calls and posts to the agency have seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Policy shift takes strategic, multi-faceted approaches. Return to Freedom has gathered information from our partners and brave activists about branded wild horses and burros, recently sold to these kill pens, and we have worked with our professional welfare partners, Return to Freedom members and supporters, and the agency to push the wheels along that guide policy change.
The BLM has just recently added more actionable wording to its sales policy. These stronger protections give law enforcement, lawyers, and advocates real teeth to go after bad actors, and disincentivizes finding loopholes to make money off of the sale of a wild horse for slaughter.
This is important: these changes are due to you and your concerns and to your consistent calling of attention to wild horses and burros falling through the cracks. That is step one. The patient, careful, behind-the-scenes policy work that Return to Freedom has always dug into, even if it is frustratingly slow and even if it appears as if we aren’t working fast enough, occurs next. We all matter here: the ones who are willing to stand up and yell about an injustice, the ones who ply through law and policy to figure out potential trickle-down effects or unintended consequences and how to make a change that has a correct and strong-enough outcome, and the people in the trenches at short-staffed, reorganized, and underfunded federal agencies.
We are thrilled at this first change in policy, and heartened that the word the street is now that flipping a horse at an auction is actually not ok and will be prosecuted. Spread it far and wide, and be confident that if and when bad actors figure out how to get around that? We’ll step in beside you all, with our partners from every side, and work to change it again.
New sales program information here:
https://www.blm.gov/programs/wild-horse-and-burro/adoption-and-sales/sales-program
You can help end horse slaughter:
- Call (202) 224-3121. Urge your representative to oppose any effort to remove the horse slaughter ban amendment when the surface transportation reauthorization bill comes up for a vote on the House floor.
- Send a message to all of your members of Congress asking for them to cosponsor the SAFE Act and the inclusion of anti-slaughter language in the surface transportation reauthorization bill.
- Help spread the word by sharing our posts on social media.
- Donate to our Wild Horse Defense Fund, which fuels our Capitol Hill lobbying, grassroots advocacy and selective litigation.
Learn more:
Watch our recent webinar on the effort to end horse slaughter.