On this 4th of July, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar officially reopens to the public the Statue of Liberty’s crown, a powerful symbol to the nation and the world of American ideals and hopes. Meanwhile, in the American West, his Bureau of Land Management is detailing plans for the extermination of a different but equally powerful symbol of the American spirit, the wild horse. While Secretary Salazar is “inviting the public to celebrate our great nation and the hope and opportunity it symbolizes”, 33,000 wild horses are in holding pens, removed from Federal designated Wild Horse Territories, awaiting the completion of BLM plans to send them to a mass slaughter, without the proper consideration of viable and humane alternatives.

Information obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Conquistador Group in Arizona has found that as Secretary Salazar stands before the Statue of Liberty in his white cowboy hat and speaks of the great American experience, he is also presiding over the formal plans to kill 33,000 wild horses, provide stress counseling for the BLM workers who carry out his orders as well as shielding them from Congressional scrutiny and labeling anyone who tries to view, expose or stop the executions as “eco-terrorists”. A quite different American experience than today’s pose for the papers.

Will the mass killing of 33,000 wild horses, a living symbol that embodies the free spirit of the American West, be one of the great legacies of Secretary Salazar and the Obama Administration?