Easy, now. No one is suggesting getting rid of all the semi-wild burros that roam the Route 66 village of Oatman, Arizona — especially Oatman businesses, which see the animals as a big reason it’s become a tourist attraction.
The burros are descendants of burros used in the area gold mines a century ago. When the mines closed, the workers turned the animals loose. During the day, Oatman’s burros roam the streets, looking for handouts of carrots, then wander into the nearby mountains or valleys at night to graze on foliage.
But, as Don Martin noted in a well-researched opinion piece in the Kingman Daily Miner, the burros are causing all sorts of problems, including Oatman. And the problems likely will worsen.
- An estimated 2,000 feral burros live in the area — four times the number recommended by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
- The number of wild burros rises by about 20 percent a year.
- The non-native burros are crowding out native sheep that roam the Mohave Valley. With all these extra grazing animals, they’re hurting the native vegetation.
- Local police report a rising number of accidents — including one last month on Oatman Road (aka Route 66) — with burros and motorists because of the animals’ surging populations.
Martin says the BLM is aware of the problem, but …:
Supervisor Jean Bishop told me the BLM reported to her that they have captured about 50 of them. Whatever the number, that is not enough.
The BLM pays private operators to feed and house thousands of burros they currently have in captivity across the U.S.A. This process is costing Americans millions of dollars annually. The reason they are not capturing them is they have no place to house them.
And the Adopt-A-Burro program? What a joke. It costs the government about $1,500 to get a burro ready for adoption, but they offer it for sale for $125 to those who take them. It is a complete misuse of taxpayer money and needs to stop.
It’s a typical conundrum. The BLM outlines a problem but isn’t allocated enough money or resources to solve it. So the problem festers.
A Mohave County official about a year ago suggested a hunting season for the burros, much like hunting deer or elk in vast swaths of the U.S. The idea was shot down (no pun intended).
Because burros are cute, the public generally finds the prospect of shooting them distasteful. But barring any cost-effective solutions that no one’s seemed to find, a burro hunting season may have to be seriously considered — especially when inevitable fatal accidents or starving herds occur.
(Image of one of the Oatman burros by Ethan Kan via Flickr)
How pathetic: people “find the burros cute”!! The people who do not want these nuisance animals culled are mostly the same people who eat all manner of meat and have no problem with the massacres of male day old chicks killed because they will never lay eggs.
A town called Mannar in Sri Lanka has a similar problem: feral donkeys roaming the streets by day and by night. Hindu and Buddhist locals would be up in arms if these vermin (?) were killed, yet they cause road traffic accidents and defecate everywhere.
Just why are people officially feeding the burros? Do they feed rats? A reality check needs to be done. I am sure there are hunters who would shoot the burros for nothing if they were allowed to use the meat for animal feed and for curing their skins.
When we live on a grossly overpopulated planet, how is it that such a small problem as these burros cannot be solved both humanely and quickly?
Do they have a neutering program for the burros ? Might be something to look at…
Yes, neutering would be one way to reduce the numbers – but only over the lifetime of the animals. More immediate action seems necessary.
capturing and field castrating jacks (or trapping and castrating on site) is certainly possible, and will be very expensive with a high mortality rate. The most expensive part will be trying to actually capture these donks in numbers, because there are not 2K out there.
It’s unfortunate but the herd must be thinned, if not eliminated. And shooting is the only reasonable answer.
It’s entirely possible that you are correct, Ralph. Esp if Sen McCain is correct and there are >8K wild burros in the state. I don’t think there are, but I encourage you to go out onto the HMAs and see for yourself 🙂
I lost interest in your article at “well-researched” followed by +2K burros @ 20% yearly reproduction 🙁
Here’s a thought. Why don’t we suggest getting a competent leader for the Bureau of land management who actually gives a darn about our wild animals, equine in general and come up with a plan to, HEAR WE GO LISTEN UP, MANAGE CORRECTLY, our public lands and wild animals, instead of appointing ANOTHER political bumblehead who knows nothing about them to handle their numbers????? It’s just ridiculous what IS happening to these animals. It’s further ridiculous to even SUGGEST shooting them or sending them to slaughter which is exactly what the BLM does when nobody is looking. If MAN would stop killing all the predators that they claim threaten the domestic livestock there would be a better balance then there is today. There are many things that CAN be done and SHOULD be done with respect for these wild herds.
What exactly is ” MANAGE CORRECTLY, our public lands and wild animals”? If ” It’s further ridiculous to even SUGGEST shooting them or sending them to slaughter ” then how should an ever increasing herd of burros be dealt with? Anyone who has kept domestic livestock knows about predators, whether they be foxes, wolves or any other carnivore that gets a taste for chickens, ducks, turkeys, sheep and even cattle. Such killings are not just “claims”. They happen, just as cars hit wild animals and also hit domestic ones allowed to roam freely.
If I let my dog loose and it caused a road accident then I’d be prosecuted. There is nothing magical about feral burros or any other animal just because it is wild. They all eat the limited amount of herbage. Should we allow packs of wild wolves to track and kill the burros? Would that be more humane – and more rational – than shooting them?
Easy solution: Contraceptive carrots.
The BLM count is bull pucky and so are the 20% increase estimates which are not correct nor do they include natural attrition rates. The fact is that babies are vulnerable with only 50% surviving to one year. Only 75% of those survivers make it to adulthood. As for native vs non-native, bighorn originated in Siberia they are not native. However, donkeys are from the same family tree as the horse. ie, horse ass, zebra which originated in North America. (Ross McPhee, Hans Klingel, Jay Kirkpatrick and other scientists verify this fact.) As for waste on training vs adoption fees take a look at cattle subsidies. When ranchers pay a fair market price to graze cattle on other people’s land it runs +/- $20.00 a cow calf pair. Ranchers leasing our public lands pay +/-$1.50 a cow calf pair. Only 3% of the meat is used in the USA. This program costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Nonetheless, despite the great generousity of the taxpaying American people for this great privilege of leasing our public lands to graze livestock, we are repaid with greed. Ranchers consistently overstock. Ranchers consistently ignore rules of rotation and timed removals. Bighorn hunters are just as greedy. The public lands that are home to our wild burros, who are federally protected, share their habitat with the bighorn. Our rights to preserve burros is in the spirit of federal protection granted them by unanimous congressional vote in 1971. In fact, the burro’s protection supercedes the rights of hunters and ranchers on these lands set aside for wild horses and burros. The most destructive force at play in the desert environment is man not burros. Who was the idiot that thought it was a good idea to allow The Peace Trail through this sensitive habitat? 1000’s of high powered off roaders converging on the desert and destroying the dunes, natural springs, and quiet clearly has an impact on wildlife. Look in the mirror to see who is hurting the desert. It isn’t the burro. https://awionline.org/content/wild-horses-native-north-american-wildlife
HAVASU NEWS HERALD
Reader comment
Marybeth Devlin
1. The wild-burro “overpopulation” exists only on BLM’s falsified spreadsheets. The Black Mountain burros are, in fact, underpopulated. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recommends a minimum herd-size of 2,500.
2. Burros are slow to reproduce. Gestation lasts an average of 12 months but can extend as long as 14 months. A jenny gives birth to just 1 foal, typically in alternate years.
3. The burro birth rate is about 14%; but half of foals die before their first birthday. Thus, the effective increase in new burro-foals is just 7%. However, at least 5% of wild burros other-than-foals also die every year. Their death-rate (5%) further reduces the surviving-foal rate (7%), yielding an average herd-growth rate of 2%. Thus, it would take 35 years for a burro-herd to double.
4. In the past 3 years, BLM has reported fraudulent herd-growth rates for Arizona’s Black Mountain burros: 25% (more than 12 times the norm), 45% (more than 22 times the norm), and 7% (more than 3 times the norm). Such growth is biologically impossible. Please note that the errors compound, as each successive year’s growth is estimated based on those that preceded it.
5. BLM staffers cannot claim ignorance. They are college-educated professionals with degrees in science and range management. They are well-aware that wild-burro herds cannot increase at such high rates. Yet, even after the fraudulent growth-estimates are brought to their attention, they willfully continue to cite them, causing local officials, such as Mr. Watson and Mr. Moss, to become alarmed needlessly. Why the falsification? Apparently, to prompt Congress to increase the Agency’s budget.
6. BLM is bound by law – the Data Quality Act – and by policy -the Department of the Interior’s Code of Scientific and Scholarly Conduct – to disseminate information obtained through “as rigorous scientific and scholarly processes as can be achieved.” However, BLM’s data with regard to wild burros is deceitful.
7. The stocking-density that BLM imposes on the Black Mountain burros is absurdly low. BLM restricts the herd to 1 burro per 4 square miles. At 2 burros per 4 square miles, BLM calls them “overpopulated.”
8. Burros do not bother other wildlife, such as bighorn. Wehausen (1998) concluded that “a negative influence of burros on bighorn sheep demography has not been shown as support for true competition.” Arizona’s current estimated population of bighorn is 6,000.
9. Burros do not disadvantage mule deer. According to the Arizona Game & Fish Department, “Mule deer are the most abundant big-game animal in Arizona, with the statewide population estimated at 120,000 post-hunt adults.”
10. To develop a Final Solution to a concocted crisis, BLM is handing out $11 million for sterilization-studies. The grant money is surely intended to buy loyalty and silence potential criticism from recipients. Plus, BLM gets to cloak itself in respectability by affiliating with prestigious institutions such as universities.
11. HSUS is seeking BLM funding to experimentally inject the Black Mountain wild burros with PZP, a sterilant. But because HSUS is the registrant of PZP, a conflict of interest is apparent. Lacking scientific impartiality, HSUS must be disqualified from being paid to study its sponsored product, and from using taxpayer money to sterilize underpopulated wild burros.
12. PZP is a pesticide that was registered without fulfilling the standard testing requirements, relying merely on what now appear to have been misrepresentations by the manufacturer. There is currently a lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of the registration, especially in light of new studies that have disclosed PZP’s many adverse side-effects.
13. PZP causes disease -auto-immune disease. Behaving like a perverted vaccine, PZP tricks the immune system into producing antibodies that induce ovarian dystrophy, autoimmune oophoritis, ovarian cysts, and premature ovarian failure. PZP quickly sterilizes jennies that have a strong immune system but has no effect on those suffering from weak immunity. Thus, PZP both “works” and “doesn’t work” but, in the long run, selects for low immune function, thus weakening a herd’s resistance to infection. If a jenny is pregnant or nursing when injected, PZP antibodies are transferred to her offspring via the placenta and milk. Stillbirths are also associated with the pesticide’s use, meaning that some of its apparent contraceptive effects are actually feticidal.
14 The experiments proposed by HSUS call for the jennies to be captured and then transported to a holding facility for injection with PZP. They would be held captive for the next several weeks in order to administer a second “booster” shot of PZP. Most (70 to 100) of the jenny-subjects would be freeze-branded with three digits on both hips for convenience in identifying them. The ugly freeze-marks would be 3½ or 4 inches high, and large in width. They would ruin a jenny’s appearance for the rest of her life.
15. PZP is a powerful endocrine-disruptor. The EPA Pesticide Fact Sheet warns women that accidental self-injection with PZP may cause infertility. Unfortunately, because the manufacturer misrepresented PZP as “so safe it is boring,” volunteer-darters have become lax in following safety-precautions.
16 Nature provides the right-way to right-size a herd: predators. Burros do have natural predators, among them mountain lions and coyotes. Both species are present in the Black Mountain area. If BLM believes that inadequate numbers of predators prevent them from fulfilling their population-control function, then BLM should work with AZGFD to conserve them.
17. The mortality rate of captive mustangs runs about 8% a year. Because they do not reproduce, their numbers steadily decline, showing that BLM’s billion-dollar figure for their lifetime care is just another Lie. BLM has since multiplied its original $1 billion figure by 230%, amplifying the fraud.
18. There are 22 million acres of wild-horse-and-burro habitat that BLM took away for political expediency. That land should be reopened and the equine captives freed there. Cost: $0.
https://www.havasunews.com/news/despite-some-steps-burro-overpopulation-concerns-remain/article_25ada4a2-bdcc-11e6-83c2-8303fe7710b3.html
Sounds like some truth and honesty for a change. Nice info Louie.
Question: Since when does 175 minus 80 = 635?
Answer: When BLM does the math.
Estimated Pre-Gather Population 175
Number of Animals Removed 80
Estimated Post Gather Population 635
Completed FY 10 Gathers (per BLM)
Black Mt Herd Management Area Arizona
https://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/wo/Planning_and_Renewable_Resources/wild_horses_and_burros/statistics_and_maps/transparency_page.Par.95462.File.dat/Completed%20FY%2010%20Gathers.pdf
Wild Burros of the West
What does “Nature provides the right-way to right-size a herd: predators” mean? Does Nature give us murderers to keep the human population in check? “Nature” has given us the whole history of this planet.
Had these domesticated burros’ ancestors not been irresponsibly set free and left to survive or die, they would not be the problem they are today. But had Caucasians not claimed the Americas as their own, then many more of the problems besetting North and South America today would just not exist.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1201616666541545&id=100000796684942
https://youtu.be/9tWNOlJ9yoY
Misinformation is being used by the BLM in order to attempt to justify removing or killing the burros. The greatly exaggerated numbers put out by the BLM would be laughable if they were not being used to manage America’s remaining wild horses and burros into extinction in order to pander to public lands ranchers, hunters, mining, etc. Make no mistake, this is all about greed.
Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act (Public Law 92-195) states that wild burros are part of national heritage and should be considered where found as integral components of federal public land. Wild burro populations around the country are decreasing.
Man is the most destructive creature in the desert. If you truly want the desert to be preserved, ban humans from entering to ranch, hunt, and recreate on their destructive dirt bikes and four wheel drive vehicles in that fragile ecosystem and leave the burros alone.
Would someone explain to this foreigner what the BLM is? What do the initials stand for? And why should members of the BLM tell lies about the burros, or anything?
Bureau of Land Management, which is a federal agency and is mentioned on first reference in the story. And, yes, BLM officials probably have more credibility than any other schmuck you find on internet comment areas.
Eric, the Bureau of Land Management manages 265,000,000 acres of public lands. Of that land mass 53 million acres were set aside in 1971 for the “principal” use of wild horses and burros. The Free Roaming Wild Horses and Burro act was passed unanimously through congress and our wild horses and burros were put under the management auspices of the BLM. Unfortunately, the BLM is tasked with multi-use management decisions that include grazing, mining and other uses, which creates a conflict of interest for our wild horses and burros. Of the 53 million acres of land (a very small percentage of the total land under their umbrella) set aside in 1971, only 19 million acres remain for the wild horses and burros. The BLM has been zeroing out Herd Areas (HA’s) systematically since 1971.
We have numerous charts showing the miscounting done by the BLM and we have FOIA documents showing their falsified reports. The burros, who bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to the state of AZ through tourism, suffer from not being able to quantify their value in dollars like the sale of bighorn tags sold to hunters. These organizations, in their greed, wish to remove our very beneficial and beneficent burros so that they can manage for a single species. The ranchers want every blade of public land grass for their cattle who they allow to destroy our public lands with impunity for their poor animal husbandry practices. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzTafhduip-wYjY0dXhER3BmeFpVVjlnVTZSYXlVcVZiV2Vj/view?usp=sharing
All the damages attributed to burros are unfair. The bighorn rut trees, and the cattle strip bare forage. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzTafhduip-weWROUVlES25TZjlJbVM2aUxQN2NYMDlYS0FB/view?usp=sharing
Wild Burros Really DO have Litters!
(Data from BLM Herd Stats)
Although it is not REALLY funny … take a look at BLM’s math … the little burros were sure “going at it” that year with a 202% increase!
250 burros had 504 (surviving) babies in ONE year!
Quick … call the Guinness Book of World Records!
https://rtfitchauthor.com/2016/05/25/the-blms-wild-horse-and-burro-statistics-continue-to-suck/
Hunt them or leave them alone