Report: US Sold 3,700 Wild Mustangs, Some Tracked to Slaughter
Animal welfare groups say 3,700 horses sold in 2025 may have entered slaughter channels after buyers resold them through middlemen, records show.
- A New York Times investigation on Thursday exposed the Bureau of Land Management for selling wild horses through a loophole that enables export and slaughter abroad, circumventing federal protections.
- Under the Sale Authority program, the government designates horses as unadoptable after three one-week listings fail to attract takers, enabling cheap sales that often end up in slaughter channels.
- Livestock trader Brandon Jones purchased hundreds of mustangs for $25 each, exploiting a system where the government spends $3,000 to capture each horse, while buyers earn up to $750 per animal at slaughter plants.
- Patricia Miller, executive director of American Wild Horse Conservation, criticized the reliance on sales over fertility control, arguing many horses sold through the program are young and saleable.
- While Congress has barred the bureau from using public funds to kill healthy wild horses, President Donald Trump has advocated for lethal measures, including proposals in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
24 Articles
24 Articles
A multicolored herd of 68 wild horses of the mustan race, which had never been sealed or confined and had already run free through the desert mountains of the west of the country, was captured by the United States government in an attempt to control the species' populations in public lands. The horses spent years in an animal confinement in the state of Idaho, while the government was trying to find for them what it called "loving home." Suddenl…
Report Says US Sold 3,700 Wild Mustangs, Some Sent To Slaughter
A New York Times investigation has raised questions about a federal program that allows wild horses removed from public lands to be sold to buyers who can potentially send them into slaughter channels overseas. The investigation found that about 3,700 wild mustangs were sold through the Bureau of Land Management's Sale Authority program.Under the program, horses that fail to attract adopters after three one-week listings can be classified as una…
Under Trump, protected wild horses are going to slaughter - The Boston Globe
Slaughtering wild horses is illegal, but the administration is creating a loophole that enables people to get mustangs on the cheap and then quickly resell them to be exported alive, processed into cuts of meat and sold abroad.
How can a protected wild mustang end up in a kill pen? Sumter County rescue explains the gap in federal protections
A wild mustang can begin its life roaming federally managed land in the American West and, years later, end up thousands of miles away at a rescue in Central Florida.
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