Federal wild horse sales program under fire after investigation confirms slaughter pipeline

EquusMagazine.com - Full Article

Skydog Sanctuary's probe into BLM activities provided evidence for New York Times exposé of 'legal loophole'

Edited Press Release
⎯ August 24, 2026

On August 20, Skydog Sanctuary, a national voice for wild horse and burro protection, called for the immediate suspension of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse & Burro Sale Authority program following an investigation published that day by The New York Times. According to a sanctuary news release, the report confirmed its allegation that the federal program is actively funneling federally protected wild horses and burros directly into commercial slaughter pipelines.

In a formal letter sent to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Skydog Sanctuary founder and president Clare Staples—representing 1.5 million supporters and followers—accused the BLM of violating federal law that bars the agency from using federal funds to sell wild horses in a manner that results in their commercial slaughter.

‘In plain sight’

“Following months of providing documentation, combing through BLM sales records, and monitoring BLM placement events and kill pens, Skydog is proud to see these urgent findings brought to national light by The New York Times,” said Staples. “The report published today confirms what we have documented on the ground for more than a year: The BLM’s Sale Authority program is sending America’s federally protected wild horses and burros into the slaughter pipeline.”

“The BLM is saying to the public that slaughter is off the table, but they’re doing it in plain [sight], using a third party,” Staples told the Times. “There are simple steps the bureau could take to end this, but they are turning a blind eye. And the only ones getting punished for what is going on are the horses.”

Federal law strictly prohibits the BLM from using taxpayer funds for any sale that results in commercial slaughter. However, when a federal court restricted the agency’s loophole-ridden Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) in March 2025, the slaughter traffic simply migrated into the Sale Authority program.

Key findings from Skydog investigation (October 2024–present)

• A historic, unprecedented crisis: The BLM sold an unprecedented 6,331 wild horses in 19 months—a massive surge over the agency’s historic average of 1,200 sales a year. A shocking 55.4% of those animals (3,506 horses) were aged 1 to 4, the most highly adoptable, prime-age horses in the system. • Agency impunity & ignored complaints: Skydog has filed eight formal complaints with the BLM citing 13 specific incidents of sales violations, with no agency action taken. The Interior Office of Inspector General (OIG) similarly rejected Skydog’s request for an investigation, referring the group back to the BLM.
• Predatory pricing & buyer rings: More than 72% of the horses (4,597 animals) were sold at or below $25. Nearly 60% of all sales went to individuals buying in the maximum allowed bulk lots of four, with Skydog identifying many of these buyers as part of coordinated buying rings.
• Flipping horses to kill pens: Skydog has tracked 333 wild horses and burros in kill pens this year, most purchased at BLM adoption events and resold within days, in direct violation of signed anti-slaughter contracts. The agency has taken no enforcement action against them.
• Bulk sales & taxpayer-subsidized delivery: The BLM awarded a bulk sales contract to livestock trader Brandon Jones, who acquired 496 wild horses over a single year with taxpayers covering shipping costs, just two months after Jones was cited for violating the federal Packers and Stockyards Act. Most are believed to have been sent directly to slaughter.

BLM activities ‘a betrayal’

“It is a betrayal of the law and the American people, who pay $140 million a year to protect these animals, only to have them sold for twenty-five dollars to be butchered in foreign horse slaughter plants,” Staples concluded.

Skydog Sanctuary remains committed to exposing the realities of the Wild Horse and Burro Program and protecting its victims. About Skydog Sanctuary

With 1.5 million followers, Skydog Sanctuary is a leading national voice for protecting wild horses and burros from slaughter. The organization provides permanent refuge to hundreds of animals across locations in Malibu and Santa Ynez, California, and a 9,000-acre ranch in Oregon. Due to federal agency inaction, Skydog has directly rescued over 30 wild horses out of the Sale Authority pipeline from commercial kill pens. It has provided 15 with permanent sanctuary refuge and placed the rest with reputable partner rescues.

More at https://equusmagazine.com/news/investigation-confirms-federal-horse-slaughter-pipeline

BLM gathers 1,025 wild horses amid outcry from advocates

AspenDailyNews.com - Full Article

1 of the largest roundups in 4 years hits Rio Blanco County public lands

Drew Shaw
Aspen Daily News Staff Writer

Lynda Smith watched the chase with one eye pressed against her camera and long telephoto lens.

Through the viewfinder, about a mile away, a band of wild horses moved fast across a ridge in a streak of brown, white and black, sprinting through the sagebrush from the low-flying helicopter close behind them.

Ahead, two metal horizontal poles stood out from the trees around them, forming a wedge that funneled into a corral. There, the band of horses would be separated and promptly loaded onto a trailer.

The horses weren’t thinking about where they were running as much as the loud flying machine they were running from.

As they bounded closer to the trap, a white stallion in the back of the group abruptly turned around to face the helicopter, forcing the pilot back temporarily, before rejoining his band’s flight.

Right as the band started to enter the funnel, the stallion turned around again, this time veering right toward the bottom of the ridge and away from the helicopter. He galloped away from capture as his family funneled into the corral, the helicopter turning low to kick up a wall of dust and trap them in...

Read more here:
https://www.aspendailynews.com/news/blm-gathers-1025-wild-horses-amid-outcry-from-advocates-faed6349

Southwest Wyoming’s wild horses will keep roaming, for now

David Dudley photo

WyomingPublicMedia.org - Full Article

Wyoming Public Radio | By Caitlin Tan
Published September 18, 2025

Thousands of wild horses will continue to roam the sprawling sagebrush sea to the northeast and south of Rock Springs.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is punting its planned roundup of all of the roughly 3,000 horses in the Salt Wells Creek and Great Divide Basin areas, as well as the northwest section of Adobe Town. This comes after a summer of back and forth amid litigation.

The BLM planned to start gathering the animals in July to appease private landowners in the area. But that got delayed until the end of August. Then October. And now, the summer of next year.

The BLM didn’t say specifically why they’re delaying, but there’s ongoing litigation from wild horse advocates...

Read more here:
https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2025-09-18/southwest-wyomings-wild-horses-will-keep-roaming-for-now

Wild horses are pitted against grazing cattle in a battle for survival across the West (Opinion)

DailyCamera.com - Full Article(Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Stop blaming wild horses for the severe damage the meat and other industries inflict on federal public lands

By Jennifer Best | Guest Commentary
PUBLISHED: August 18, 2025

Colorado does not have a wild horse problem as a recent Denver Post headline states. The real issue lies with the meat industry’s grip on our public lands. The federal government authorizes ranchers to graze an exorbitant amount of cattle in wild horse herd management areas. It is this industrial use of our public land that degrades it.

Instead of confronting the outsized influence of private industry on public lands, the state of Colorado looks the other way and scapegoats wild horses.

Evidence of this problem abounds in the data publicly available from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) allotment reports. There are four grazing allotments in the Piceance-East Douglas herd management area, where a staggering 10,960 cattle are allowed to graze at various times throughout the year. Yet the Bureau of Land Management insists the area can sustain just 235 wild horses based on BLM’s outdated “aappropriate management levels” or population targets. Only 362 wild horses are allowed to graze in Sand Wash Basin, yet a staggering 12,026 sheep and 300 cattle are allowed to graze in three allotments there at various times throughout the year.

There are a measly 1,516 wild horses left in Colorado on 365,988 acres of land, according to the BLM’s 2025 program data. The fact that the state is now paying the federal government to deploy paid professional darters to expand its birth control darting program in lieu of violent helicopter roundups may make it look like Gov. Jared Polis is listening to public concerns. But the truth is, Colorado’s wild horses are being managed to extinction. A model for the West? It should be anything but...

Read more here:
https://www.dailycamera.com/2025/08/18/wild-horses-grazing-cattle-blm-land-populations/

Feds plan to remove all wild horses from 2.1M acres of Wyoming’s ‘checkerboard’ starting in July

(Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Wyofile.com - Full Article

Complete removal of nonnative equines from the Great Divide Basin, Salt Wells Creek and the northwest portion of the Adobe Town herd management areas still faces a public review process and legal appeal.

by Mike Koshmrl
April 1, 2025

The Bureau of Land Management’s contentious plans to remove all free-roaming horses from vast reaches of southwest Wyoming’s “checkerboard” region could begin as soon as this summer, although a legal appeal to stop roundups remains in limbo.

On Monday, the federal agency released a 47-page environmental assessment outlining plans to gather and permanently remove several thousand wild horses from 2,105 square miles — an area nearly the size of Delaware — managed by BLM’s Rock Springs and Rawlins field offices. Horses would come off an additional 1,124 square miles of private land within the checkerboard. A public review period is underway with comments due by April 30. If the BLM greenlights the round-ups, they could begin within the next three months and continue for a couple of years, possibly longer.

First to go would be the estimated 1,125 free-roaming horses in the Salt Wells Creek herd and 736 animals in the northwestern portion of Adobe Town, according to BLM Rock Springs Field Office Manager Kimberlee Foster. Then in 2026, horse-removal crews would move on to eliminating an estimated 894 horses in the Great Divide Basin herd...

Read the rest here:
https://wyofile.com/feds-plan-to-remove-all-wild-horses-from-2-1m-acres-of-wyomings-checkerboard-starting-in-july/

Idaho wildfires burned most food in wild horses’ habitats, prompting emergency roundup

MSN.com - Full Article and Video

Story by Nicole Blanchard

The Bureau of Land Management’s Boise office announced Monday that it will gather nearly 100 mustangs from Southwest Idaho rangeland after wildfires burned the vegetation the wild horses need to survive.

In a news release, officials said the Owyhee and Four Rivers field offices would begin an emergency roundup next week. They plan to gather about 40 mustangs from the Sands Basin Herd Management Area near Marsing and about 50 from the Four Mile area north of Emmett.

BLM officials said there is not enough vegetation in either area to support the current mustang populations.

According to the news release, both herd management areas were “nearly completely burned” by lightning-caused fires. The Jump Fire, which ignited near Jump Creek in Owyhee County on Aug. 5, burned nearly 26,000 acres. That include a large swath of the 11,700-acre Sands Basin mustang habitat, which BLM officials said can support between 33 and 64 horses.

The Paddock Fire, which started during the same thunderstorm, burned nearly 190,000 acres. Some of that included the 18,800-acre Four Mile Herd Management Area, which can support between 37 and 60 horses...

Read more here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/idaho-wildfires-burned-most-food-in-wild-horses-habitats-prompting-emergency-roundup/ar-AA1p4Oil?ocid=weather-verthp-feeds&apiversion=v2&noservercache=1&domshim=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1&batchservertelemetry=1&noservertelemetry=1

Wild horses' fate is poised for US appeals court showdown

Reuters.com - Full Article

By Jenna Greene
September 16, 2024

Sept 16 (Reuters) - It’s hard not to be moved by the beauty of wild horses galloping across a western plain, hooves pounding and manes flying. Little wonder such images are featured in ads selling everything from beer to homeowner’s insurance. But where some see wild horses as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West,” as Congress put it in a 1971 law, opens new tab protecting the animals, others decry them as pests -- voracious grazers that reproduce rapidly and compete with livestock for forage on unfenced tracts of private land.

A showdown over the fate of wild horses in Wyoming and beyond is looming at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mustang advocates are challenging a recent lower court decision they say will allow, opens new tab the federal government to decimate the free-roaming herds, rounding up nearly 5,000 animals and warehousing those that are not adopted in long-term holding facilities.

The Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, “is trying to pull a fast one” in seeking to remove the horses from vast swaths of public land intermixed with private parcels, said Bruce Wagman, of counsel at 100-lawyer Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila.

Working at a reduced “low bono” rate on behalf of clients including wild horse conservation group Return to Freedom, Wagman told me that given the ever-growing mustang population, “We’re past the point where we can just say ‘Leave them alone...’”

Read more here:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-wild-horses-fate-is-poised-us-appeals-court-showdown-2024-09-16/