Everyone sidesteps responsibility for starving horses

I must really be missing something to not understand why no one has done anything more about this situation when they've known it was going on for so long. I know horses are thought of differently out west than we do here in the east, and they are expected to forage on open range and do all right by themselves, but it seems to me like you could argue that Mr. Stovall is holding Mr. Leachman's horses illegally. Honestly, I can't even begin to figure out how you solve this situation, aside from starting by letting the locked up horses loose and humanely destroying any that are injured or too far gone to help. All I know is that this situation is just WRONG, and its worth more than 5000 dollars and five years of jail-time for whoever is found to be responsible.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/article_6d566364-3c43-5661-b6a7-7e113a13972c.html?mode=story