Looking the other way?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Looking the other way?

Wild horse advocates fear the worst. They want to know the truth about the fate of the horses and whether the U.S. government looked the other way as the federally protected animals seemingly disappeared.

“I want to know where the horses went,” said Laura Leigh of the group Wild Horse Education, which advocates on behalf of the wild mustangs. “It’s disgusting, it’s abhorrent. Whoever signed that slip to approve those sales, I want to look them in the eye and say, ‘What were you thinking?’”

The BLM is charged with protecting wild horses under federal law and has confirmed that the Interior Department Office of Inspector General is investigating the agency’s sale of mustangs to rancher and livestock hauler Tom Davis.

The Davis investigation comes amid a growing controversy over the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program. The agency faces a dire situation: Nearly 50,000 horses captured during frequent roundups, so-called “excess animals,” are living in government holding facilities that are nearing capacity. Horse adoptions are down, so the BLM has turned to selling the animals.

The government says Davis, who paid just $10 per head, was the biggest buyer ever of wild horses. Its sale of the animals to Davis from 2008 to 2017 was uncovered by writer Dave Philipps in a September 2017 story, “All The Missing Horses,” for the nonprofit news organization ProPublica. The story questioned whether Davis sent the horses to so-called “kill buyers,” middle men who export livestock to meat packing plants in Mexico, but reached no firm conclusion.