LAS VEGAS (AP) - The federal government is looking for homes for 427 wild horses after buyers pulled out of revised contracts imposing criminal penalties for selling animals to slaughter.

Twenty individuals and two tribes canceled contracts after the Bureau of Land Management in April suspended its sale program amid reports of horse slaughter, according to interviews with BLM officials and records obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Some people completed paperwork, and some sent checks paying for their animals, but backed out before completing the purchases, BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said.

The BLM declined to identify individuals who canceled contracts and those who bought about 1,500 wild horses as of Sept. 30, citing privacy rights afforded people who do business with the government.

At least one Indian tribe, the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, pulled out after receiving 277 of the 400 horses it requested, according to BLM records.

BLM officials attributed the canceled contracts to frustration with the shutdown of the program, but said some buyers might have walked away upon learning they would be subject to criminal penalties if they sold horses to slaughter.

Through the end of September, the BLM sold 1,570 horses that once roamed free in Western states to private ranchers, Indian tribes and horse advocacy groups, agency officials said.

Buyers in 17 states bought horses, paying as little as $1 each to as much as $1,501, BLM records show. The average price was $22.

Horse advocacy groups criticized the BLM for selling the animals at bargain prices behind closed doors.

Congress last year directed the BLM to sell wild horses for as little as a penny each. Agency officials said sales were not meant to raise money but to find horses good homes.

The government counted roughly 24,500 horses in holding facilities as of October, costing taxpayers an average of $500 a day, or roughly $20 million a year.

Some 32,000 wild horses and burros are on public lands, about half of them in Nevada. The BLM plans to round up at least 4,000 to lower the number of animals agency scientists say the range can sustain.

Before the BLM suspended its sales, officials reported selling 1,800 horses from Western ranges.

The program was halted after the agency revealed April 21 that six wild horses that sold for $50 each to an Oklahoma man were resold within a week to a meatpacker in Dekalb, Ill.

Fifty-one horses sold to the Rosebud Sioux tribe of South Dakota wound up at the same meatpacking plant after the tribe sold them to a horse broker. Tribal officials said they did not realize the broker would sell the horses to slaughter. Thirty-five of the animals were killed before federal inspectors alerted the BLM, and Ford Motor Co. helped buy back the surviving horses.

Sales resumed May 18 after Interior Department attorneys crafted a tougher contract to deter buyers from turning horses over to make a profit.