BLM Program for Wild Horses

Thank you for your coverage (Jan. 5) of the stupidity and deception (my words) of the Bureau of Land Management and its multimillion-dollar effort to save wild horses. I find it repugnant that a government agency paid to administer a well-intentioned program not only violates the public trust, but profits from it.

In the BLM’s $16-million-a-year program, about 90% of the horses, most of them young and healthy, are not saved, but go to slaughter. The government spends up to $1,100 to round up, vaccinate, freeze brand and adopt out a horse, but adopters pay only $125 (or sometimes as little as $25) for the horse, and turn around and sell it to a slaughterhouse, typically for $700.

Even Clifford Hansen, a former U.S. senator who introduced the bill to save the horses, wants his name off the bill, because of his disgust with what has evolved.

Martha Mendoza’s poignant parallel story noted the intense, 10-mile helicopter chase of the horses, their ultimate tiring and the training of a “Judas” horse to lead the other horses to captivity. The label “Judas” in this case was misdirected. That wretched title belongs not to the horse, but to the BLM.

JOYCE M. KENNEDY

Ventura