Quite often, good intentions can have unintended consequences, as we have seen with the BLM roundups.
Although drought and habitat destruction are often cited as reasons for managing wild horse herds, the public seldom sees the resulting outcomes for these animals. Due to abuses of the BLM’s adoption program, opportunists who can acquire a horse for a mere $25 do not always have the best intentions. Animals have ended up at auctions and sent to slaughterhouses across the border where they suffer hellish deaths.
In other situations, animal welfare responders have assisted law enforcement in impounding starved, neglected horses from some adopters’ premises. Apparently, the lure of an inexpensive animal clouded the ability to determine whether those adopters could afford the long-term care their animal would require.
Just as with any other government-funded program, subsidized by the American taxpayer, why are we not doing more to manage these programs responsibly and hold abusers accountable? Citizens do not want to pay for animal cruelty.
