Fallon Auction: The Obama Administration’s Stealth Horse Slaughter Program

Source: Buzzfeed, by American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign

The Obama Administration has said repeatedly that it opposes horse slaughter. But actions speak louder than words. What’s happening now in Nevada suggests that the Administration — through its federal agencies — is actually complicit in sending horses to a slaughter auction.

This notice of a livestock auction — which is frequented by kill buyers
who purchase horses and transport them to slaughterhouses in Canada or Mexico — tipped us off that the Feds were up to something. 700 horses don’t just appear out of nowhere, so we did some digging.

And we discovered this back room deal between the U.S. Forest Service and
an Indian tribe to spend our tax dollars to capture wild horses and deliver them to the slaughter auction despite the stated opposition of the Administration to horse slaughter.

Under this arrangement, there is no way to distinguish between unbranded horses owned by the tribe from unbranded horses who are wild and protected under federal law.

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The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have a legal responsibility under the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act to ensure that protected wild horses on federal lands do not end up being slaughtered. In this case, the feds have admitted that horses were herded off public lands (green and light brown above) and due to the close proximity of the capture area to a BLM Herd Management Area, we believe that many of the captured horses are federally protected wild horses.

And since kill buyers frequent livestock auctions like these, this arrangement would result in federally protected wild horses being slaughtered. The LA Times describes it this way:

"The unluckiest of America’s wild horses end up in places like this: a livestock yard in rural Nevada, where potential buyers coolly assess each animal’s physique, looking for a deal…In the crowd are so-called kill buyers scouting product to ship to a foreign slaughterhouse."

This is why we brought legal pressure on the Forest Service who quickly folded and told us and the media that they would postpone the roundup and transfer of wild horses to the tribes.

What they didn’t tell us was that the tribe executed the roundup anyways! Now there are 417 wild horses awaiting their fate at the slaughter auction. Kill buyers are already lining up to purchase these horses and truck them to slaughterhouses in Canada or Mexico.

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