For years, wild horse advocates have called for the prosecution of a Colorado rancher who bought more than 1700 wild horses in 2012 and sold them to slaughterhouses in Mexico. Last week, the U.S. Inspector General released a report confirming the allegations.
Wild horse advocate Ginger Kathrens with the Cloud Foundation says the Bureau of Land Management policy that let people buy 35 horses at a time made it easy for rancher Tom Davis to take advantage.
“When you buy a horse for ten dollars and you sell it for two, three, four hundred dollars and you buy 1700 of them, the motivation is money. And so depending on what the market value was, he was making a profit of 200, 300, 400% of what his expenses were.”
The report confirms that the Bureau of Land Management’s law officers failed to investigate when Davis repeatedly purchased the maximum number of horses. But the report adds that there’s no plan to charge Davis or any BLM employees with a crime.
Kathrens says she’s concerned that no one will be held accountable.
“I’m not hearing that anyone’s feet are going to be held to the fire unless we can light it,” she says. “It’s going to, I think it may require push and shove from wild horse advocates to try to figure out why nobody has any penalty.”
In a letter included in the report, the BLM says it has recently changed its policies. Now, people can buy no more than four wild horses within a six month period without agency approval.
The report says both Colorado attorney’s offices involved in the case have declined to prosecute.
