Ken Salazar has been a disappointment throughout his tenure as Interior Secretary, but his recent failure to adequately address allegations that his Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was complicit in the sale of 1,700 federally protected wild horses to a known kill buyer is unacceptable.
In September, a ProPublica report exposed Salazar's BLM for selling “truckload upon truckload” of captured wild horses to the kill buyer, Tom Davis, who purchases U.S. horses and sells them to slaughterhouses in Mexico. Davis just happens to be a neighbor and business associate of Secretary Salazar and his ranching family in Colorado.
After hearing this news, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) put together an open letter signed by 25,130 Americans which that encouraged Secretary Salazar to halt the BLM's program until he could ensure that no more wild horses would ever again be sold for slaughter. On November 13, AWHPC supporters delivered the petition to Secretary Salazar's office at the Department of Interior and requested a response by November 27. AWHPC has not received a response.
The BLM's wild horse roundups continue full speed ahead, even as video has surfaced online that shows wild horses with BLM brands being offloaded at a slaughterhouse in Mexico. And Secretary Salazar continues to claim he has "no recollection" of Davis, even though they grew up in the same small town and Davis has hauled livestock for Salazar's ranch. In addition, the BLM's sales of wild horses to Davis skyrocketed after Salazar became Interior Secretary in 2009. FIRE K Salazar and convict him of animal cruelty and murder x 100 000 animals
