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NARRATOR: There is a hidden side of America,
secret, mysterious, forbidden, where nothing is what it seems.
In 1971, D.B. Cooper jumped from a plane
with a $200,000 ransom never to be seen again.
It's America's only unsolved hijacking.
NARRATOR: Our unprecedented investigation
re-creates Cooper's daring plunge.
You can see how much that money bag rose up.
Get rare entry to an off-limits site
where critical evidence was recovered.
The money was found right over there.
Did Cooper jump to his death...
I think his chute didn't open and he splattered.
...or survive his stunning leap of faith.
D.B. Cooper could be out there watching this show right now.
NARRATOR: Disaster threatens the Louisiana bayou.
Now get extraordinary access to the scene.
You could fit a 40-story building in that?!
A giant sinkhole that's turning this peaceful place
into a ghost town...
Our community's ruined.
NARRATOR: ...and threatening to swallow it whole.
They've got Mother Nature upset.
But is the worst yet to come?
You're living on top of a time bomb.
Wild horses, a living symbol of the American spirit.
But today, federal-government roundups
send thousands into captivity.
What they're doing is heartbreaking.
And horse buyers may be skirting the law,
trucking mustangs to the slaughterhouse.
They're gonna sell 'em for meat.
It's time to look behind the secrets,
mysteries, and conspiracies.
This is "America Declassified."
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Washington State's Cascade Mountains,
an untamed wilderness with a dense forest canopy.
This massive forest has concealed answers
to one of the most audacious crimes in American history
for more than 40 years.
He got on a plane in Portland, Oregon, last night.
He was just another passenger
who gave his name as D.A. Cooper.
NARRATOR: It was Thanksgiving Eve, 1971,
when Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 jet bound for Seattle.
Upon landing, Cooper demands $200,000 and 4 parachutes,
which the FBI supplies.
Cooper frees the passengers,
then forces the crew to fly from Seattle to Mexico.
But 40 minutes after takeoff,
Cooper unexpectedly opens the back door
and parachutes into the night.
He hasn't been seen or heard from since.
This is the infamous FBI sketch of D.B. Cooper
released immediately after the hijacking.
His daring crime and mysterious fate
made Cooper a sinister American legend.
It's America's only unsolved hijacking.
He landed somewhere out there
in this incredibly remote, rugged part of the country.
Nobody can agree.
Did he live and disappear, or did he die during that fall?
I'm here to walk in D.B.'s footsteps
from the moment he went out of that plane,
see what might have happened.
NARRATOR: The key to the mystery is Cooper's leap from the plane,
and that's where Mike intends to start.
Andy Farrington is one
of the Pacific Northwest's elite skydivers
with nearly 20,000 jumps to his credit.
He's agreed to help Mike analyze Cooper's daring escape.
Andy, this is it.
This is the type of chute that D.B. Cooper used
when he went out the plane.
It was designed for the Navy, built by the Navy
to withstand jumps out of their military aircraft.
Was Cooper a veteran jumper or a total novice?
No one knows.
His identity is a complete mystery.
Only one thing is certain.
Cooper made an extremely dangerous jump.
It would have been at about 200 miles per hour,
about 10,000 feet, nighttime.
Talk about what that's like.
This is an emergency parachute.
It is designed to open.
So, basically, if he is able to reach that rip cord,
the parachute would have opened.
Andy was intrigued enough to stage a skydive
that duplicated key elements of Cooper's jump,
minus, of course, the Boeing 727.
It's a high-risk experiment.
Like Cooper, Andy jumps at 10,000 feet
using the primitive Navy emergency chute.
And just like D.B. Cooper, Andy wears a business suit.
He's weighed down by a 23-pound money bag
hanging off the front of his parachute rig.
But Andy takes a few liberties.
He jumps during the day, and though he lands in a forest,
it's not an isolated wilderness.
And he brought back video of his jump.
It may help reveal what happened to D.B. Cooper.
He was wearing loafers that night,
and a lot of people believe they just came off in the jump.
What do you think happened?
Yeah, 150-mile-per-hour prop blast jumping out of that jet,
I think they're out of there.
Okay. Well, let's see how this goes for you.
Now, you're coming out.
And right here, look at that.
Look at the force of that chute deploying.
Did it cause any concerns or difficulties?
It was quite the force.
Um, you could see how much that money bag rose up.
It started off at my hip area,
and then it rode up all the way about my chest.
He could have lost some money right after the jump.
Exactly. Whether his knots came undone,
whether that bank bag, you know, exploded open,
you never know.
And that'd be a sad 15 minutes
watching the $200,000 just swirl around you.
Cooper would have little control
over where he landed with his Navy survival chute.
All right.
Now, as you're coming down, I mean, look at this.
Look at this. Let's stop it right there.
I mean, that's pretty much it.
With the exception of it's nighttime,
that's pretty much what Cooper was looking at.
Yep. You don't want to hit
part of, like, the 150-foot-tall tree
that then could collapse your parachute,
and then you could land even harder.
And then you're out in the elements
with a sprained ankle, a broken ankle,
any number of those things.
So, realistically, best-case scenario
would be getting stuck in a 40-foot-tall tree.
Even if Cooper lived through the jump,
he still has to live through the landing.
BAKER: If D.B. Cooper survived the jump,
this is how he likely ended up --
stuck up in a tree who knows how high.
Not only is he worried about survival
in this type of environment,
but now he knows he's just hijacked a plane.
He's gonna be the subject of a manhunt
at the beginning of daybreak.
He gets his money bag loose.
Once he does that, he says, "I'm just gonna let it go."
Now, once he gets the money out of his way,
D.B.'s got to get the chute off.
And then it's just a matter of him marshaling his courage
and starting the journey down the tree.
It's nighttime. It's wet.
He's not wearing any shoes.
So, it's infinitely more difficult for him to do this.
[ Exhales sharply ]
Well, I've made it out of the tree.
I don't have any shoes, but I got my $200,000.
Now all I got to do is survive.
NARRATOR: The temperature that night was about 38 degrees.
Did D.B. Cooper have any chance of surviving
a harsh Pacific Northwest November?
Cooper's landing site is hotly debated.
Most experts place it somewhere
in Washington's remote Washougal Wilderness
north of the Columbia River.
To reach a highway,
Cooper faced a grueling trek on foot of a week or more.
Mike is meeting Jerry Thomas, a D.B. Cooper expert,
in the same area
where authorities believe the hijacker landed.
Thomas taught survival techniques
to elite U.S. military forces during the early 1980s.
BAKER: This is the general area
where you and law enforcement think
that D.B. Cooper would have landed.
What do you think happened to him
when he went out the plane?
I think his chute didn't open and he splattered.
He went splat.
Jerry believes Cooper's business suit and lack of survival gear
are telltale indicators Cooper was fatally unprepared.
Say he actually got here, he didn't get hung up,
he managed to get his feet on the ground.
What's he got to do first?
If the man survived the jump
and didn't have any injuries at all
and knew what he was doing and could find food and warmth,
I'd give him a 50/50 chance.
THOMAS: If he didn't have any survival skills at all,
which all indicating factors was that he didn't,
he, uh...[ Chuckles ] He'd have died that night.
NARRATOR: After the jump, nearly a decade passed with no Cooper,
no cash, and no clues.
The FBI and almost everyone else
believed Cooper's remains were lost
in some dark, inaccessible corner
of the Pacific Northwest wilderness.
Then in 1980, the case took an astonishing turn.
Nearly $6,000 turned up on a sandbar in the Columbia River.
If the cash is part of D.B. Cooper's ransom money,
it might mean he's alive and well after all.
Mike hitches a ride with another D.B. Cooper expert, Galen Cook.
He'll take Mike to the exact spot where the money was found.
The find was made at Tina's Bar, a beach on the Columbia River.
Because no one knows precisely where Cooper landed,
it's a distance of anywhere from 20 to 50 miles
from where the FBI believes Cooper touched down.
BAKER: Now, we're coming up on the site.
COOK: That's correct.
The money was found right over there in that clearing.
And we're gonna beach the boat just next to the clearing.
This site is private property.
Only a select few are allowed access.
The owner gave Galen special permission for this visit.
A short hike takes the team to the heart of chapter two
in the D.B. Cooper mystery, the $6,000 question.
This is it right here.
I would say right here, Mike.
Galen, tell me.
How was the money found, who found it,
and where was it?
What kind of condition was it in?
An 8-year-old kid named Brian Ingram
and his parents were down here having a hot dog roast
on February 10, 1980, Sunday morning.
So, almost nine years after D.B. jumped?
Exactly right.
And he was looking for firewood on the beach.
Galen brought three packets of currency
to show how the ransom money was positioned.
He found the money in a small hole
on the beach here at Tina's Bar.
Was it stacked one of top of the other just like that?
Precisely.
The money was independently bundled,
held by a rubber band,
and stacked just like that on top of each other.
No.
No, just out, open to the elements,
Exactly right.
The bills were severely weathered,
but the large amount of cash led the family who found it
to notify the FBI.
Could agents connect the cash to D.B. Cooper?
When the FBI office in Portland examined the money,
they found that each bill had a serial number
that matched up with the money
taken by D.B. Cooper back in 1971.
And then I would assume
that the first thing the FBI would do
would be to seal this area off, right?
That's the first thing they did.
They dug up the entire beach.
They wanted to see if D.B. Cooper's body
could be found on the beach.
But guess what? They never found anything else.
They never found D.B. Cooper's body,
his parachute, or any of the money.
This was it right there.
There were 100 packets given to Cooper in 1971.
Where are the other 97 packets?
They weren't on this beach.
Fascinating.
The FBI suspected that Cooper died
and his money was lost with him.
But the Tina's Bar discovery
raised big questions about that finding.
If Cooper was dead, three packs of his money
had to drift down streams and rivers,
while remaining stacked, one on top of the other.
Mike will conduct an unprecedented experiment
to see if that's even remotely possible.
Let's see if it can happen.
NARRATOR: In November of 1971,
hijacker D.B. Cooper jumped from a plane
with $200,000 in cash.
He was never seen again.
Authorities believed Cooper was dead and the money lost.
But in 1980, nearly $6,000 of Cooper's ransom money was found
on the banks of the Columbia River
as many as 50 miles from where most experts believed he landed.
The money was found in three bundles of cash
stacked one on top of the other.
The FBI scrambled to explain how it got there.
THOMAS: There's a lot of rain, these tributaries and streams,
and there's plenty more than what you see in the summertime,
are very high.
And the money, over time, during the rain periods,
would move a little bit at a time
down to Tina's Bar through the Columbia River.
NARRATOR: However, there's one big problem with that theory.
The FBI concluded that the three stacks of bills, just like this,
somehow managed to make their way
from the Washougal River Basin all the way downstream
and land at Tina's Bar stacked one on top of the other.
That was their conclusion.
Let's see if it can happen.
At this point, I can still see the stacks.
They're still one on top of the other.
So far, it seems plausible.
NARRATOR: But Cooper's money
would have to remain stacked mile after mile.
Is that even remotely possible?
BAKER: After a few minutes,
possibly because the bills got saturated,
they did split apart.
They did break apart,
and we're back to the same mystery,
which is how on earth, if the FBI's correct
and those bills made it all the way downstream to Tina's Bar,
how did they end up stacked one on top of the other?
NARRATOR: Though the FBI case is still officially open,
most agents suspect Cooper died
when he landed in the Washougal Wilderness,
yet nobody ever found a trace of the money,
Cooper, or his parachute.
But what if the FBI theory is wrong?
What if Cooper didn't land in a remote wilderness?
Authorities know when the jetliner's back door opened,
but they don't know exactly when Cooper jumped.
What if he waited for several minutes and then jumped?
By then, the plane would be closer to Tina's Bar,
a place with few trees, no mountains,
and the nearest highway less than a mile away.
Some see the buried money as evidence that Cooper
landed in this vicinity and survived his caper.
The debate continues about D.B. Cooper's fate,
but there's no question of his audacity.
Few people would enter the front door of a jet plane,
then jump out the back at 10,000 feet.
Was he a smart, calculating criminal
who knew exactly what he was doing,
or was he a bumbling, dysfunctional,
desperate individual?
42 years on, and we're still really no closer
to understanding what happened to D.B. Cooper.
We have three packets of money,
and that is the extent of our physical evidence.
D.B. Cooper could be out there watching this show right now,
or his remains could be hanging from a tree
in a remote part of the wilderness never to be found.
We just don't know.
NARRATOR: The Louisiana bayou.
There's no place like it in America.
It's a region with a geography, culture, and flavor all its own.
But 45 miles south of Baton Rouge,
in the town of Bayou Corne,
an unprecedented disaster is under way.
A giant sinkhole threatens to turn this slice of bayou heaven
into a ghost town.
REPORTER: Governor Bobby Jindal
declared a state of emergency tonight
when a giant sinkhole appeared in Bayou Corne.
REPORTER #2: The swamp seems to be expanding,
swallowing dozens of trees whole.
Residents have reported seeing gas bubbles
rising from the water.
Is it a man-made disaster or a natural one?
Most sinkholes are only big enough
to swallow a home or a few cars.
But this immense sinkhole threatens an entire town.
The sinkhole filled with water from below ground,
and now it looks like a toxic lake,
expanding to 22 acres with no end in sight.
As a result, Bayou Corne's 300 residents
were ordered to evacuate.
I've got 23 years built into what I have now.
Your home is not worth a nickel,
and you can't live in it for the next year.
Our community's ruined.
Welcome to our world.
NARRATOR: A giant water-filled sinkhole
is threatening the community of Bayou Corne
in the heart of Louisiana's swamp country.
REPORTER: More than 300 residents of Bayou Corne
are under mandatory orders to evacuate.
NARRATOR: Many residents have abandoned their homes
and left town.
Some still hang on.
The sinkhole continues to expand.
It's grown from 4 to 22 acres
and contaminated the local water supply.
This water used to be our drinking water
back many years ago. You can't drink it anymore.
The sinkhole has also flooded the area with polluted water
and released toxic gases into the air.
Geoscientist Ben McGee is here to investigate
whether residents can safely return to their homes.
I'm here in the Louisiana bayou.
Over my shoulder is an enormous 22-acre sinkhole that opened up,
and that forced up some potentially toxic gases,
including methane, which is an explosive hazard,
and hydrogen sulfide, which is a respirator hazard.
And this triggered a mandatory evacuation of a nearby town.
Now, I'm down here to try to get my hands on
some real data to figure out what the story is here,
what went wrong, and what does the future hold for this area.
NARRATOR: The sinkhole's even fueling a bizarre rash
of Internet conspiracy theories.
It's allegedly part of a federal government plan to split America
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes
along the New Madrid fault, an ancient seismic zone.
Why?
A divided country is easier to control.
Geologists have a more down-to-earth explanation,
but one that's just as astonishing.
Bayou Corne sits above
an immense underground column of salt.
In 1982, salt was mined out,
leaving a huge cavern filled with water.
In 2012, one side of the cavern collapsed.
The earth above fell in, creating a giant sinkhole.
Water and gases released by the cave-in bubbled up from below.
The first step of Ben's investigation --
an aerial view of the monster sinkhole.
I've got an engineer drone technician,
and I'd like to get this thing up in the air
and see if we can't get
a bird's-eye view of the situation.
The camera reveals a rainbow sheen on the water,
suggesting it's contaminated with something oily
and possibly toxic.
Now that Ben has captured an aerial view
of the disaster area, he wants to investigate on the ground.
Texas Brine, the company
that operates the collapsed salt mine,
agreed to give Ben special access to this hazardous site.
So, this is it, huh?
This is it. This is the sinkhole.
When this sinkhole first appeared,
the depth was measured at 440 feet deep.
You're saying when this thing first opened,
you could fit a 40-story building in that?
That's significant!
No one knows how big the sinkhole will get.
For the moment, Texas Brine has built this containment berm
to help keep the sinkhole's polluted water out of the bayou.
But another threat isn't so easily contained.
So, you can see the hydrocarbons on the surface right here.
That means at the very least,
you've got something contaminating the water.
Oils reflect light at a different angle than the water,
and that's what gives it that rainbow color.
NARRATOR: The biggest danger is from toxic gases.
Ben is testing their concentration at the surface.
McGEE: It's definitely a measurable number.
You can smell it.
It smells a little bit
like someone left the engine running out here.
NARRATOR: Scientists and residents fear
two types of gas -- hydrogen sulfide,
which is odorless and poisonous, and methane,
which is flammable and explosive.
McGEE: We crossed our lower threshold for methane,
so we're definitely into the range
where the instrument says it's significant.
NARRATOR: Dennis Landry is taking Ben out on the bayou
near the sinkhole.
Dennis is one of 100 residents
who have defied the evacuation order.
He's staying in his bayou home.
Dennis was also the first to discover signs of trouble.
In May of 2012, he spotted gas bubbling in this public waterway
that runs through the bayou.
That strong bubbling
you see right in the middle of the bayou,
that's where it all first started.
At the time, no one knew
that the salt cavern was starting to collapse far below.
It was less than what it is now.
Now it seems to have increased in strength.
NARRATOR: In August,
the sinkhole itself opened up nearby.
The sinkhole is just right over there.
Yeah, behind the sign.
But the gas release that Dennis first spotted is still raging.
Well, I think that sounds good for collecting a reading.
All right. Let me GPS mark this guy.
That bubbling is totally incredible.
It sounds like you're over a caldron.
We are getting an occasional trace of hydrogen sulfide,
which is exactly one of the things
that people feared was happening here.
NARRATOR: On the bayou,
you can see the gas bubbling to the surface,
but on land, there is no obvious sign.
The gas is invisible and odorless.
It could be percolating up to the surface anywhere in town.
It's like a leaking gas stove
that threatens to blow up the kitchen,
only here, the leaking gas stove...
is the entire town of Bayou Corne.
MAN: I don't think they have a clue
where all this gas is coming from
and it's under us as we speak.
NARRATOR: In September of 2010,
a pipeline carrying methane gas under San Bruno, California,
suddenly broke.
This was the result.
Several blocks burned to the ground.
Eight people died.
Now explosive methane gas
is seeping into the town of Bayou Corne, Louisiana.
It's been flowing steadily since May of 2012,
just before the giant sinkhole opened up in the bayou.
Texas Brine installed these flare wells
to reduce the threat of explosions.
We want to make sure that the residential areas
are free from the threat of natural gas.
The wells vent underground methane gas
and burn it off at the surface.
There are currently 42 in Bayou Corne.
SUBRA: And this is an attempt
to remove as much of the methane gas as possible
and hopefully lower the explosive level in the homes.
And everybody's looking at it like an experiment
because it's never happened anywhere else in the world.
Nobody knows how much gas is left
or how long it will take to burn off.
Compounding the threat, most buildings sit on concrete slabs,
which can trap the methane gas.
It collects underneath, becoming an explosive hazard.
Practically any home here could be trapping methane.
You're living on top of a time bomb.
Texas Brine has offered relocation payments
to Bayou Corne residents.
Some have accepted the deal and left town.
Others are trying to negotiate a flat buyout.
We're engaged in negotiations with those persons
to come up with a settlement amount
that is fair and reasonable,
and so far that's going well.
I don't believe anything they say.
Trying to mediate a price for my life.
McGEE: After spending time here in Bayou Corne,
after actually getting out into the bayou on a boat,
talking to residents, collecting data,
and getting out to the sinkhole itself, you know,
it's clear there is some methane and hydrogen sulfide
coming out into the community.
And the real mystery here is whether or not
this gas will recede with time or whether it will persist.
LANDRY: I want the world to see
just how beautiful a place it is.
It's a virtual bayou paradise.
This is not my house. This is my home.
It's a wonderful place to be -- was a wonderful place to be.
NARRATOR: Two months after Ben's visit,
locals shot this spectacular but disturbing footage.
Watch as the sinkhole swallows up full-grown trees
in a matter of seconds.
They told us early on this has never happened anywhere
in the history of the universe.
And now there's a bunch of experts.
[ Whistles ]
They've got Mother Nature upset,
and you can't control her when she gets upset.
They still roam what's left of the untamed American West.
Mustangs.
They're as much a symbol of freedom and power
as the bald eagle.
Wild horses have run free here since the 16th century,
the time of the Spanish conquistadors, and in 1971,
congress passed a law protecting them.
So, why is that same government
now rounding them up by the thousands?
Is there any truth to rumors
that the horses are ending up in Mexico slaughterhouses?
Journalist Dave Philipps earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination
for his reporting.
Among the stories he's covered
are allegations about the wild horses.
They were the horses that really made the West.
They were the horses that the Indians rode.
They were the horses that the Pony Express rode.
They're dependable, tough, and readily available.
All you had to do was go out and catch one.
NARRATOR: Now Dave's continuing his investigation.
He's come to the remote Nevada desert near Kamma Mountain.
This wild corner of America is supervised by the BLM,
the Bureau of Land Management,
within the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This specific area, you've got horses that are far above
what their population's supposed to be,
and you've got drought issues
that are impacting their ability to survive.
Dave's here to witness a roundup of wild horses,
what the BLM calls a gather.
A lot of people have never seen these roundups,
even though the BLM is doing them year-round.
Can you lead us through the steps?
You know, out here in the West and on the BLM lands,
the horses are scattered in small groups
all over the place, which is why
in the case like the gather we're setting up for now,
a helicopter really helps find them
and bring them into the trap site.
BLM agents are setting up a funnel-shaped corral
for the horses.
Mustangs will be herded
from as far as 10 miles away into this pen.
By law, the BLM must allow the public to witness the roundups,
even activists opposed to the government's current policies.
Laura Leigh founded
the Wild Horse Education Advocacy Program.
So, the BLM says that it's really rare
for any horses to be hurt while they're doing this.
You've been to a lot of roundups.
What have you seen?
LEIGH: I've seen animals run at extreme temperatures.
I've seen babies run
till their feet literally fall off.
I've seen horse bands fractured and scattered,
where you can have a mare out here and her foal in the trap,
and they're never back together again.
I've seen horses run through barbed wire,
and it's not once in a while.
It's every day.
The BLM is keeping witnesses
as far away from the action as possible.
This far away, we can't see anything.
It's not meaningful access at all.
Are things going on here that someone wants to keep secret?
NARRATOR: America's wild mustangs are vanishing,
and Pulitzer-nominated journalist Dave Philipps
wants to find out why.
Is the BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, at fault?
Dave's come to observe what the BLM calls a gather.
It's a roundup that removes horses from the range
and trucks them to a holding pen.
Dave and the film crew arrived at the gather only to learn
the BLM had delayed it a day.
Is the agency hoping to avoid the camera?
Dave's team just waited them out.
Off in the distance,
there's visible evidence the roundup has begun.
Modern mustang herding is done not by cowboys,
but by helicopter.
LEIGH: They are coming. Look at them coming.
They're doing everything they can to evade the predator.
See, they'll even try to dash underneath him.
They're gonna try to go all the way up that hill.
One horse is actually a kind of secret agent
working for the BLM.
And they just let the Judas go, I think.
It's known as a Judas horse,
a domestic horse trained to lure the wild horses into the corral.
It acts as a kind of pied piper
because the mustangs usually follow the Judas horse's lead.
The horses most likely to be injured
are the young and the weak.
Here a foal is separated from its group.
Right now, we've got two wranglers heading out
to rope a foal that was left behind.
The activists film the roundup, but the BLM films the activists.
MAN: Everybody down please.
We have another group coming in.
NARRATOR: Out on the range,
the helicopter drives another band of horses toward the trap,
but one stallion bolts the other way.
What he's trying to do is draw the helicopter away.
But the desperate attempt doesn't work.
The rest of the herd follows the Judas horse into the trap.
Now the stallion has a choice -- join the others or run.
The stallion chooses freedom.
For the rest, life will never be the same.
PHILIPPS: From here on out, this is the end of the line.
It's the end of the line.
Their freedom is lost.
Today the roundup captures 99 mustangs.
Why is the government going to such lengths
to capture so many wild horses?
So, what's the fear if you don't round them up?
You've got areas where the horses themselves
have caused a lot of damage
or they've just eaten everything up
and there's nothing for them.
So, if you leave them out there,
their condition's just going to worsen.
The mustangs are also roaming land
coveted by the mining and fracking industries.
But some of the biggest concern is coming from cattle ranchers
whose cows consume much of the same water the mustangs do.
FALEN: Well, most of the people
that got horses intermingled with cattle
are just really frustrated
because they're trying to manage the resource,
and the horses have just used up the resource.
PHILIPPS: If you listen to horse advocates,
they make it out that all the ranchers
want to immediately send all the horses
on the range and in holding to the slaughter plant.
It doesn't make any difference what they want.
Uh-huh.
And it's not gonna happen.
The public's not gonna stand for it at the moment.
And besides, we don't have a processing plant in place
where you could even do it if you wanted to.
Dave wants to understand how mustangs live in the wild.
He heads out to their natural habitat
on the open Nevada range.
This is wild-horse country out here,
the driest, emptiest part of the country.
NARRATOR: In these parts, water is a key resource for cattle,
as well as mustangs and other wild animals.
One of the things that the BLM told us
is there's too many horses on the range, way too many,
and that if you leave all these wild horses out here
like the advocates want to do, it'll ruin the range.
The horses aren't ruining the range.
You've got too many other interests on the range,
and you've got nobody managing it.
The BLM management is what's ruining the range.
We're gonna lose our wild horses, there's so few left.
And BLM says there's too many?
Absolutely not.
The horses are supposed to be protected
by the law passed in 1971.
The law says they're to be protected from capture,
branding, harassment, and death
on the place where they now stand as a living symbol
of the pioneer spirit of the West.
And has the government been true to the law?
Absolutely not.
What they're doing is heartbreaking.
Today some 30,000 mustangs run wild,
a tiny fraction of their historic population.
There used to be millions of wild horses all over the West.
What happened?
Well, after we got finished using them to fight our wars
and plow our fields,
we started doing something called mustanging,
running them down with airplanes and trucks
and roping them in the desert,
and a kill buyer would come pick them up
and grind them up for chicken feed, fertilizer.
We turned wild horses into chicken feed?
Absolutely -- chicken feed and fertilizer.
And then dog food.
That's what we did with our wild horses.
Congress passed the 1971 law
to protect wild horses from abuse and killing,
but the secret slaughters may now be happening again.
And that's why Dave wants to investigate
what will happen to the mustangs he saw captured in this roundup.
The first stop for the formerly wild horses is here,
the Palomino Valley Placement Center.
These are temporary quarters
for the mustangs operated by the BLM.
PHILIPPS: 1,500 horses all kept in what's essentially
an old cattle feed lot that the government took over.
What we're looking for here today
is what kind of condition these horses are in.
Do they have enough room? Are they well taken care of?
Do they have unhealed injuries? Things like that.
If there's neglect, we want to know.
NARRATOR: What kind of life
awaits these wild horses in captivity,
or is the harsh truth that they'll be slaughtered for meat?
NARRATOR: The U.S. government's Bureau of Land Management,
or BLM, has just rounded up nearly 100 wild horses
in the remote Nevada desert.
Journalist Dave Philipps followed them here
to the Palomino Valley holding facility.
The BLM has given Dave rare access
to see how the formerly wild horses
are being treated in captivity.
PHILIPPS: So, after a roundup, you bring horses here.
How many horses are in facilities like this?
We have, um, roughly 49,000 horses right now
in the various types of facilities we manage.
That means the government is holding
nearly twice as many mustangs in captivity
than currently live in the wild.
The financial cost is staggering.
And on average, how much are you paying
per horse per day to feed and take care of them?
It averages to about $5 a day or a little over that.
That adds up to nearly $90 million a year.
But according to the BLM,
its feeding program is only budgeted at $75 million.
The BLM has to remove mustangs from the range
so ranchers and others can use it.
But the agency lacks the funding to do the job right.
As a last resort, it offers the horses for adoption.
So, how many of these horses end up getting adopted?
Last year, nationally,
we ended up adopting right at 2,200, I believe.
That's not even 5% of the BLM's captive mustang population.
The BLM has a multimillion-dollar problem --
what to do with thousands of surplus horses.
The law prohibits selling them for slaughter,
but during an investigation for the "Colorado Springs Gazette,"
Dave uncovered some disturbing evidence.
One of the dirty secrets of the holding system
is they get rid of horses in ways
that they don't want to talk about.
There were selling truckload after truckload of horses
to a guy in Colorado they've never met,
and after he got the horses, no one ever saw them again.
Now, the BLM said, "We checked this guy out. He's okay."
I checked him out, too, and it turned out
he was sending them down to Mexico to a fate unknown.
We still don't know what happened to all those horses.
NARRATOR: This footage was secretly filmed
by The Humane Society.
It shows BLM horses taken into Mexico.
Additional scenes showing their fate are too disturbing to show.
I found that the sale program was selling hundreds of horses
to one guy in Colorado
and then those horses were essentially disappearing.
Should the public be concerned about that?
I thought I wasn't gonna answer this question.
You don't have to answer it, but I got to ask it.
I apologize.
We're trying to make corrections
in how we follow up on those.
We're doing a better job of looking at our policy
of how we sell and offer horses for sale
so we don't have the concern that caused to the public.
This is a wild horse rescuer in Nevada named Sally Summers.
[ Clicks tongue ]
She adopts mustangs from owners who can no longer care for them.
We call and we tell people, we warn them,
"Please, if you're in a tough spot, let us know.
We'll come get the horse. Here's what we do."
She often finds herself in competition with kill buyers.
When people advertise for free horses,
usually they'll get a call from somebody that says,
"How much does that horse weigh?"
And that's a dead giveaway.
What do they plan to do with them?
They're gonna sell 'em at auction and sell 'em for meat.
How much could a big horse be worth?
Somewhere in the area of about $500 to maybe $1,200,
depending on the breed of the horse.
There are no easy answers when it comes to preserving
these icons of the American spirit.
One option is humane birth control,
which the National Academy of Sciences recommends.
Horse advocates and even some ranchers support it.
Dave Philipps' investigation suggests
that the BLM's current policy is unsustainable.
It doesn't do justice to the mustangs or the agency.
PHILIPPS: If these horses are never rounded up,
you never have to worry about protecting them from slaughter.
If we can find a way to manage them on the range
without having to remove them,
then we don't have to police them
to keep them away from slaughter.
It just will never happen.
NARRATOR: It's hard to imagine an America
without its majestic wild horses.