Challenging the Sale of Wild Horses from Devil’s Garden, California

Update: On March 27, 2020, plaintiffs dismissed the lawsuit after the passage of a 2019 omnibus appropriations package which included language prohibiting the U.S. Forest Service from killing or sending healthy horses or burros to slaughter. Read the full press release.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund and the American Wild Horse Campaign filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s plans to round up and sell horses living in the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory in northeast California’s Modoc National Forest.

The territory, established in 1975, is federally managed by the Forest Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is long-standing policy for the Forest Service, in connection with the Bureau of Land Management, to sell some of the horses rounded up in Devil’s Garden and other federally managed lands. But in the past, these horses have always been sold “with restrictions” — meaning that the horses could not then be resold for slaughter.

In 2018, for the first time, the Forest Service is allowing some of these horses to be sold “without limitation,” removing the protection from slaughter. This new policy applies to horses who are more than 10 years old, if they haven’t been otherwise sold within 60 days of the roundup period. These horses who can be sold for slaughter have been priced at just $1 each, with each purchaser eligible to buy up to 36 horses at a time.

Who is being sued, why, and under what law? The lawsuit argues that the Forest Service’s plan violates the federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and California Penal Code section 598c — a state law that makes the slaughter and export of horses for human consumption a felony.

What court is the lawsuit filed in? The United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Why this case is important: The law doesn’t allow the Forest Service to go forward with its plans, and the American people don’t want to see wild horses be rounded up and sold to slaughter.