Blaming Trump for the mustang slaughter? Point the finger at Obama and Biden, too

In a recent exposé titled “Under Trump, Protected Wild Horses Are Going to Slaughter,” the New York Times reported federally protected mustangs are increasingly bound for slaughterhouses. But the article’s focus on the current administration obscures a far more troubling reality. For decades, America’s wild mustangs have been routinely funneled toward slaughter, regardless of who sits in the White House — a crisis ultimately driven by the Bureau of Land Management. This is not simply the story of one administration’s cruelty, but rather of a rogue federal agency continuing to evade accountability under Democratic and Republican leadership alike.From its inception, BLM demonstrated an institutional bias against free-ranging equines, participating in the systematic eradication of over a million of them throughout the mid-20th century in order to clear Western lands for commercial interests. When Congress crafted the first legislation protecting America’s wild horses, the Department of the Interior even sought a carve-out to exempt BLM from having to follow the law, though this was denied. Congress institutionalized wild horse protection and outlawed sale or slaughter in the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, but this landmark legislation contained a fatal flaw: enforcement was entrusted to BLM, the very agency wild equines needed protection from. Then in 2004, the 1971 Act was amended to create a “Sale Authority” loophole, which BLM exploits to this day. Under Sale Authority, BLM sells certain animals for as little as $25 to $125 each, creating a lucrative opportunity for kill buyers.During the Obama administration, BLM sold 1,794 federally protected wild horses to a rancher named Tom Davis, who then sent the vast majority directly to slaughter. The marketing specialist who sold Davis the horses claimed the volume of his purchases didn’t warrant any special scrutiny from BLM. However, a subsequent DOI Inspector General investigation revealed a glaring conflict of interest: she had sold the horses to hit internal sales targets, and received “exceptional” performance ratings and bonuses for doing so. Throughout the investigation, BLM’s website assured the public it was an “absolutely false” myth that it was selling wild horses to slaughter. Then, shortly before the public learned of the scandal, the agency quietly changed its web copy to reflect merely that it was not “BLM’s policy to sell or send wild horses to slaughter.” It took no further action on the investigation’s findings. And the employee who sold the horses to Davis? She was promoted.Another example of BLM’s failures is the Adoption Incentive Program, which paid individuals $1,000 to adopt wild horses. Conceived under former President George W. Bush, piloted under former President Barack Obama, and continued under President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, it was eventually exposed as a taxpayer-funded avenue to slaughter. Because BLM implemented a program with known welfare risks, over a thousand of America’s wild horses were fraudulently adopted and slaughtered before the program was shut down by court order.Just last year, BLM sold an astonishing 3,718 wild equines, many straight into the slaughter pipeline. This surge under Trump, while inexcusable, is only the latest iteration of a decades-old problem. Eighty years into BLM’s history, the public is still reading the same kinds of headlines and hearing the same agency spin. The common denominator in every one of these scandals is not any one president or political party, but the Bureau of Land Management itself. THINK YOU OWN YOUR LAND? A 100-YEAR-OLD LOOPHOLE SAYS STATE AGENTS CAN WALK RIGHT INCongress must step in to close the loopholes BLM uses to circumvent federal protections, as well as pass the Save America’s Forgotten Equines Act to outlaw American horse slaughter entirely. With humane methods such as fertility control available, cost-effective population management is entirely possible without cruelty.This is not a partisan issue. Presidents come and go, but until BLM is reformed, the blood of America’s wild horses will remain on our government’s hands.Eric Kleiman is the founder of research accountability group Chimps to Chinchillas, and developed much of the research in this article as a contractor for the American Wild Horse Conservation. Meghan Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Wilberforce Institute, a pro-liberty & pro-free market nonprofit dedicated to reducing animal suffering.