by Jack Ferm
It’s time to dismantle the BLM, an agency that follows no barrier of law.
This agency has been one of the more corrupt Federal agencies ever
since it’s founding by President Harry Truman in 1946. In their tenure
over public lands, they have done more to destroy watershed than protect
it, their incompetence as an agency of government has been
unprecedented, and they have allowed cattle and sheep to overgraze the
land to the extent that much of our range lands are today closer to
wastelands. They have pitted cattle and sheep ranchers against the
American wild horses and burros for grazing rights while making secret
deals to sell wild horses and burros to slaughterhouses in the U.S.
(before they were shut down) and later to slaughterhouses in both Canada
and Mexico or illegal slaughterhouses that still are operating in the
U.S. This agency has been involved in knowingly fraudulent adoption
schemes and fictitious “sanctuary” herds to facilitate the needless
removal of horses off the range.
This has left us, we the people, no option but to dismantle the BLM.
It’s time to shut down this criminal enterprise and perhaps transfer
these lands to the states with agreements that the wild horses and
burros are to remain free protected and unmolested.
BLM employees and contractors have been the driving force behind the
horse-to-slaughter program, which has been ongoing since the 1980s and
possibly even prior. This has been demonstrated by the criminal
prosecutions of horse theft and sales to slaughterhouses by such cases
as have been filed in Texas, Wyoming, Oregan, and Utah. But none have
been filed in Colorado, which has been the hotbed of agency corruption.
See U.S. v. Hughes and U.S. v. TOMLINSON.
BLM director Jim Baca, had a short-lived tenure of only nine months
as head of the agency. Baca’s concern for the wild horses and their
plight under the corrupt BLM led to his being fired by Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 1994. His termination was cheered by the
Cattle Association and in particular by Mike Fusco, field coordinator of
the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. Fusco said, “One down and 99
to go,” as Babbitt,
whose family was in cattle ranching and tied to slaughterhouses, would
request and accept Jim Baca’s resignation and put to rest the
investigations into BLM degradation of the American wild horse.
Jim Baca was intent to clean up the BLM, but the cattle barons would
have none of it. They have always been in control of this agency. They
have since the beginning wanted all wild horses sent to slaughter. That
war continues today between the horse and the cattle interests.
Baca found evidence of a number of dubious activities that warrant the call to dismantle the BLM:
—Wild horse theft during roundups.
—“Black Booking,” or phony double-branding in order that horses
rounded up could vanish from all paper trails and end up at the
slaughterhouses.
—Manipulation of wild horse adoptions where one holds proxies for a group of kill buyers and the horses all end up at slaughter.
—Use of satellite ranches where horses are held for days or weeks as stopping points on the way to slaughter.
—Fraudulent horse sanctuaries subsidized by the government to care
for unadoptable wild horses deemed excess and removed from the range as
fronts for commercial sales to slaughter while ripping the government
off at a price of $1.10 a day for phantom horses that have already been
sold and slaughtered.
One of Jim Baca’s investigations accepted for prosecution centered on
BLM employees’ direct participation, with the approval of BLM managers,
to sell wild horses to slaughterhouses by using the satellite ranches
as holding facilities.
BLM drivers would deliver the horses to kill buyers or these
satellite ranches and share in the money the horses brought in from the
slaughter facilities. The money was then divided among the BLM employees
who were participants in the horse-for-slaughter scheme.
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