Across the Western U.S., wild horses that once roamed freely are ending up penned in corrals at facilities self-described as kill pens.
The owners of these businesses typically buy the horses at auctions and then resell them, often to slaughterhouses overseas or to rescuers hoping to save the animals from such a fate.
Wild horses and burros are protected under a 1971 law that established the right for these unbranded animals to live on public land, often referred to as the range. But the Bureau of Land Management says their numbers have surged, and the resulting overpopulation requires interventions that cost taxpayers millions, hurts vegetation and wildlife, and creates challenges for cattle ranchers whose cows share the land.
The same 50-year-old law tasked the agency with caring for the population of wild horses and burros, including maintaining an ecological balance — even if that means removing excess animals. So every year, the BLM sets a target number of wild horses and burros to round up. Last year, it removed over 20,000.
Many of these horses get sent to government-funded corrals and pastures. Some are put up for adoption and, since 2019, an incentive program has paid adopters $1,000 to take in the animals and care for them for a year. After that, the ownership title is transferred to these private owners and the horses’ fate is left in their hands.
In some cases, the animals then get sold, which can put them on a path to the slaughterhouse. An NBC News investigation found several horses with federal freeze brands — identifying symbols marked on the horses’ necks after they get rounded up — being sold in online advertisements posted by kill pens in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Documents obtained via a federal records request show that the brand numbers on those horses match federal adoption paperwork.
Two of the three adopters listed on the records pertaining to the horses in the Oklahoma and Arkansas kill pens did not respond to requests for comment; the third denied ever having sent a branded horse to a kill pen but said she gave one adopted horse away to a friend after she rehabilitated it.
When they advertise horses for sale, many kill pens suggest that they’re giving an animal a last chance to be saved before it gets shipped to slaughter — if someone is willing to pay to rescue it. These online ads often include a price tag that can approach $1,000 per horse.
Even for animals that were once protected by law, the practice is not illegal as long as the adopter has obtained the ownership title to the horse.
“At that time, when they apply for private ownership and it’s granted to them, that animal then does become private property. It is no longer protected by the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act,” said Holle’ Waddell, division chief of the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program, referring to the 1971 law.
That makes it difficult to track how many branded horses end up at risk of slaughter; the BLM stops keeping tabs once an animal becomes privately owned.
As for horses considered “untitled” — not yet owned outright — the BLM said in a statement that it is “unaware of any evidence that untitled wild horses or burros are being sent to slaughter.”
“In the rare instance in which we hear of an untitled animal being sold without authorization, we take immediate action to retrieve the animal,” the statement said.
But advocates insist the adoption program is steering horses to be slaughtered.
“The Bureau of Land Management is wiping its hands clean of the fact that advocacy organizations like the American Wild Horse Campaign have been documenting wild horses and burros in droves ending up at kill pens all across the country because of the incentivizing of the cash for the adoption incentive program,” said Grace Kuhn, communications director at the American Wild Horse Campaign.
Indeed, the issue is not new: A 2021 New York Times investigation found that some adopters were pocketing the incentive money and then selling the horses at auctions frequented by slaughterhouse brokers.
The BLM told NBC News that it “continues to work with wild horse advocates and other interested parties on additional potential changes to the adoption program to strengthen protections for adopted animals.”
The agency maintains that the program is essential. There are more than 82,000 horses and burros on public land, BLM officials say, which is far higher than the roughly 26,000 the agency considers the appropriate level, and slightly higher than the total in 2018, before the adoption program began.
“That is a crisis that’s headed towards ecological disaster,” Waddell said.
Last fiscal year, the BLM spent $83 million in taxpayer funds to care for captured horses. It costs $2,000 per year to care for a horse in a federal corral, according to Waddell.
“About 60% of our budget annually is spent to care for animals that have been previously removed from public lands,” she added.
The goal of the adoption incentive program is to find other safe homes for the horses while reducing government costs.
Cattle ranchers support the efforts to curb the horse population. Nevada rancher Anna Fallini said competition for resources like grass and water between her cows and wild horses is threatening her family’s livelihood.
The family has ranched cattle in the state for more than 150 years as part of a program that issues grazing permits on allotments of public land. But free-roaming horses in the area eat the same plants, or forage, as the livestock.
“We’re seeing a lot of our friends who are going out of business because they’re having to reduce their number of cattle because of the loss of forage, because of the loss of water to accommodate for the horses, that they no longer logistically can stay in business,” Fallini said.
Horse advocates, on the other hand, don’t believe wild horses are overpopulated in the first place.
“They’re removing the horses from the public lands so more private cattle and sheep can graze where the horses had grazed,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign.
Roy and other advocates say the system is rigged against the horses.
“There’s a whole industry that has developed around these roundups, and it’s millions of dollars going into the pockets of the helicopter contractors, into the livestock operators who hold the horses in holding pens, and also in long-term pastures. And so there’s a lot of money involved and a lot of special interests,” she said.
Roy said a better solution would prevent horses and burros from having to be rounded up at all. One option is injecting them with contraceptives, which her organization supports as long as the drugs are safe, humane and “preserve the natural behaviors of the horses,” Roy said.
The BLM already does that, Waddell said, and has “ramped up our efforts in applying fertility control to wild horses and burros.”
As for reducing the risk that once-wild horses and burros end up in slaughterhouses, the BLM said revisions to its adoption program are being considered. Eight months after The New York Times investigation, BLM officials moved a required post-adoption inspection up to the six-month mark, rather than a year, and mandated that a veterinarian or a BLM official certify an animal’s health before ownership is transferred.
Waddell said that in her view, the adoption program has been a success.
“We’ve seen a record number of adoptions being placed over the last three years,” she said.
