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  • 2016-09-13 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the Bureau of Land Management Vote to Slaughter 44,000 Wild Horses? (en)
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  • In September 2016 rumors began circulating on Facebook claiming that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) planned to euthanize 44,000 perfectly healthy wild horses, ostensibly to make room for beef cattle. One popular version of the rumor held that: Another version was issued as a Humane Society press release about the purported mass equine euthanasia necessitated by the overcrowding of holding facilities: These accounts were largely accurate, but the left many readers with the mistaken impression that the BLM had voted to euthanize thousands of horses. However, the vote undertaken by an advisory board (not the BLM itself) and was offered to the bureau as a recommendation for potential action (not as a firm decision to implement any particular euthanasia plan). We contacted Ginger Kathrens, who was referenced as the sole dissenting voice in the advisory board's vote to slaughter the horses. Kathrens explained that she participated in a 9 September 2016 BLM advisory board meeting in Nevada, clarified that the advisory board comprised many non-BLM employees (her role on the board was that of an advocate for humane treatment of animals), and confirmed that the advisory board came to a near unanimous vote to slaughter unadopted horses being kept in holding facilities due to problems with overpopulation and that she was the sole dissenting voice in that vote. She also cited a 2013 report [PDF] published by the National Academy of Sciences warning about unaddressed conditions unsustainable for maintaining healthy horse populations: On 12 September 2016, the BLM issued a statement that they would not be accepting the board's recommendation to euthanize and would be seeking management alternatives: The BLM also published a notice on their web site stating: (en)
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