PHOTO: CBS reporter Kati Weis covering the wild horse controversy in Colorado.
By Staci-lee Sherwood
The Canon City Prison Complex (CCP) in Colorado isn’t just a prison for human inmates; it’s often been called a prison for the wild horses held there. Every year thousands of wild horses are rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) despite the horses being granted legal protection under the law since 1971. The very act of the roundups violates more than the intent of the law; the roundups themselves violate many animal cruelty statues as well.
If the law had been enforced these past 50 years, most of the issues at this prison would not have happened.
Where is Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland? She is missing in action. No one will call her out because they fear being called racist or sexist. Neither would be true since Haaland has turned out to be the most incompetent and most anti-wildlife boss of a job previously held by men. Her gender and race have nothing to do with her negligence, but they apparently give her a pass in 2022.
Unlike most holding facilities, this one had a program where the inmates took care of the horses. When I spoke to Annie Skinner in November 2021, I was told that inmates interested in working with horses just had to sign up. There was no further vetting done into the background of inmates. Then, seemingly out of the blue, the program was cancelled. For years, allegations of abuse of the wild horses came from eyewitness accounts from many advocates and nonprofits concerned about the welfare of the horses now in a high stress situation.
The best investigation so far about the deaths at Canon City comes from Kati Weiss and CBS Denver… not from any wild horse advocate group.
Over the years, rumors fanned the flames of concern that CCP was part of the slaughter pipeline that is very much a part of the BLM roundup program. While the BLM did hold adoptions, in reality very few horses ever get adopted. Horses are brutally rounded up and removed from the range then transported to one of several holding facilities. Many of these places are privately owned but supported with tax dollars and closed to the public. Whenever the public is closed off, oversight and accountability fall to the way side. Horses come in and then seemingly disappear.
The images the BLM projects make it appear the horses have lots of room to freely graze. The use photos that don’t show the dirty water and filth the horses have to stand and sleep on. A photo is a moment captured… it never tells the whole story.
Independent investigations with eyewitness accounts have shown that the number of horses the BLM lists at any given facility is higher, sometimes alarmingly higher, than the number of horses actually there. Kill buyers have a cozy relationship with the BLM and swarm the adoption events. This is the worst kept secret and has been reported on many times. Records are not accurate and there is rarely any type of clear full photo ID with freeze marks making it easy for horses to go missing. Corruption has hounded this agency for decades especially where the Wild Horse & Burro program is concerned. Listen to eyewitness accounts about the slaughter pipeline none of the non-profits will tell about… do they even bother to find out ?
In April 2022, the BLM official for the prison, Steve Leonard, started making claims that horses there were dying from equine influenza. Dozens of deaths out of the blue from the flu that is rarely fatal makes no logical sense. Daily death tolls mounted till they hit 145… then as quickly as they started, they stopped….. As the death toll rose, calls for an independent investigation into the BLM and the prison have been ignored.
Wanting control, the BLM said they would investigate themselves. First they said only the West Douglas horses were dying, despite having been there for months. A claim about weak genes causing the deaths was suggested… which the BLM would be responsible for, causing the loss of diversity due to incompetence and roundups. Then a shift back to the flu, due to not being vaccinated, while the more recently rounded up Sand Wash basin horses were vaccinated, was the cause.
Along the way the BLM added additional excuses, tossed out for public consumption: they were understaffed; the horses were extra stressed; exposure to a wildfire months before being rounded up.
There is no independent proof of any of this. Everyone involved has ties to the BLM, USDA, or Colorado State University and have a vested interested in maintaining the status quo. This includes all the ‘non-profits’ involved… especially those located in the state.
Genuine Wild horse advocates want third-party verification that:
- Horses have died on the premises and not been sent to slaughter
- Detailed necropsy reports showing cause of death by an independent veterinarian not employed by the USDA
- Photo ID with corresponding freeze mark number of every horse listed as being there
- Name of person/company who picked up the dead horses
- Location where the dead horses were sent
Governor Jared Polis on May 19, 2022, called for a delay to BLM roundups on Twitter.
“Due to the loss of 142 horses from disease, I am calling for a delay to consider more humane options for the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse roundup.”
We call on the Dept of Interior and the Dept of Justice to do a real deep transparent investigation. We are sure they will find more than enough to prosecute under the law.
Staci-lee Sherwood is a freelance writer and blogger based in Deerfield Beach, Florida.