An Update on Huck and Puck, the AIP, and the Illegal Donkey Skin Trade
(March 4, 2022) On an early Sunday morning last October, a large red stock trailer backed down our driveway and maneuvered its way to the main door of our barn. After over a 2,000-mile trip from a foster home in Wyoming, Huck and Puck, two Bureau of Land Management (BLM) burros pulled from a kill pen in Oklahoma, had arrived at their new home in western Massachusetts.
Mary with Huck and Puck
This is a story about Huck and Puck. But it’s also about the BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) that has sent untold numbers of other burros like them across the border to Canada or Mexico for slaughter. Just as important, it’s about how BLM burros – as well as thousands of domestic donkeys and wild burros from around the world – have become victims of the illegal donkey skin trade that has proliferated as a result of the growing demand for Ejiao, a gelatin derived from donkey hides that is used primarily in China for medical and beauty treatments.
Huck and Puck
After losing our Thoroughbred mare last year, my husband Dick and I needed a companion for Rain, our BLM mustang mare. Being all too familiar with the growing number of BLM burros ending up in kill pens as a result of the AIP, we decided we had a home for two of them.
Enter Huck and Puck, who have come to symbolize the BLM’s broken promise to protect and preserve America’s iconic wild horses and burros.
In summer 2019, at three and four years old, Huck and Puck were removed from the Seven Troughs Herd Management Area (HMA), about 75 miles northeast of Reno, Nevada, along with almost 200 other burros, and shipped to the nearby BLM National Wild Horse and Burro Center at Palomino Valley.
On October 18, 2019, they were adopted by a cattle rancher in Lindsay, Oklahoma – I’ll call him Billie N. – through the AIP. This is an ill-conceived federal program that pays the public $1,000 to adopt up to four unhandled BLM wild horses and burros at a time.
While the BLM boasts that the AIP is finding homes for wild horses and burros “with families who will care for and enjoy them for years to come,” Billie N. was not one of them. After receiving title to Huck and Puck on November 19, 2020, he flipped them at a kill pen in Stroud, Oklahoma in January 2021. He received another $400 -$600 for each of them – the current slaughter price for donkeys.
That’s bad enough, but on December 8, 2020, Billie N. and a close relative – I’ll call her Darleen N. – adopted another eight burros through the AIP because the BLM does not follow up on previously adopted animals. We don’t know the fate of these burros but suspect they, too, will end up at the Stroud kill pen.
Fortunately, however, in February 2021, Evanescent Mustang Rescue and Sanctuary pulled Huck and Puck, along with a trailer load of other AIP burros, from Stroud and placed them with one of its foster homes in Wyoming. Eight months later, Dick and I adopted them.
Having Huck and Puck join our family has been a true joy, but there’s been a few small challenges. We were total “Burro Newbies,” and as we’ve read and been told over and over, burros really are different from horses – and not only because of those wonderfully long ears and paintbrush tails.
First, there’s their braying so unlike our Rain’s high-pitched whinnies. Initially, Huck and Puck were surprisingly quiet, which worried us. In the past month or so, that’s changed. Loud, beautiful brays that can be heard in our house and around our neighborhood have become increasingly common, especially around feeding time. We love it!
And, true to their species’ reputation, Huck and Puck can be stubborn, occasionally planting themselves and refusing to move. Burros don’t like to yield to physical pressure; instead, they push back. Also, before our two boys decide to do something we ask them to do, it’s clear they have to have a good reason to do it. I swear I can see their wheels turning. We’ve come to realize that Huck and Puck have policies to which we are not yet privy. Still we’re making progress. We’ve taught them to lead – most of the time – and pick up their feet – some of the time. Note: Our farrier has proven to be immensely patient!
Given Huck and Puck’s traumatic past, what has surprised Dick and me the most is these little guys’ willingness to trust us. When they first arrived, they were glued to one another, never leaving each other’s side, whether it was walking down the hill to their turnout, carrying a three-foot stick, or turning to catch some afternoon sun. Now, they’re seeking us out for company, wanting to be brushed or hang around when we’re mucking out their stall. They’ve proven to be affectionate, stoic, resilient, and wise beyond their years, so much so that Dick frequently refers to them as “old souls.”
More about the AIP
The BLM launched the AIP on January 30, 2019, as a way to boost the number of adoptions of untrained wild horses and burros. Its goal: open up more space in holding so that it could round up and remove more animals from public lands.
While the AIP has indeed increased adoptions, it’s also resulted in a major influx of BLM horses and burros ending up in kill pens, meaning that a federal program that is supported by taxpayers is actually sending these iconic animals into the slaughter pipeline.
As reported in the New York Times front-page expose last May, AWHC’s ongoing investigation into the program has found that AIP horses and burros are placed in imminent threat of being exported to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. And there’s growing evidence that these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. Additional FOIA requests and the painstaking work of an AWHC staff member show that even more BLM horses and burros have also met – and still are meeting – this tragic fate.
As for burros, AWHC has already confirmed that 53 have been adopted through the AIP and then flipped, and another 25 or so are pending confirmation upon receipt of FOIA records.
Although AIP burros are being found at kill pens across the United States, Stroud, where Huck and Puck landed, is the most notorious – so far, 43 have shown up there. It’s also a favorite dumping ground for groups of family members who adopt the limit of four burros each and then flip them. For example, in May of 2021, one family unloaded 12 AIP burros at the same time, raking in up to $19,000 from the AIP and the kill pen. And, of course, there’s Billie N. and Darleen N. from Oklahoma.
The 12 AIP burros rescued from the kill pen
Until recently, AWHC’s rescue partners Evanescent Mustang Rescue and Sanctuary, Skydog Ranch and Sanctuary, and Montgomery Creek Ranch have been able to purchase the burros and place them through their adoption program or provide life-time sanctuary. However, the volume of AIP burros showing up at kill pens has now exceeded the capacity of these groups and others to take more, placing them at risk of slaughter.
Despite being presented with AWHC’s initial findings in a May 2021 report, the subsequent rulemaking petition filed by AWHC in June, and a July 2021 National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board recommendation to end cash incentives, the Department of the Interior and the BLM have yet to conduct a transparent investigation and take any meaningful steps to stop the flow of wild horses and burros to slaughter and the waste of taxpayer money that supports the program. For example, the agency won’t end those cash payments or limit the number of animals adopted and housed at the same address.
As AWHC continues our investigation into the AIP, we fully expect to uncover more evidence that exposes the legal and animal welfare problems sanctioned by this government program.
Ejiao and the Illegal Donkey Skin Trade
As mentioned, Ejiao is used primarily in China, but the United States is the third-largest importer of ejiao.
According to Brooke USA, China’s donkey population had hovered around 11 million, but the high demand for Ejiao in the last 20 years has reduced that population to 6 million, causing a search for a new supply. The result: an illegal donkey skin trade that’s decimating the species across the globe and subjecting them to terrible abuse.
In Kenya, for example, Brooke USA estimates that about 60 donkeys a week are being stolen from their owners and ruthlessly slaughtered, sometimes in the brush or street near their owners’ property. Last year, 159,631 donkeys in Kenya were slaughtered, leading to predictions that they will vanish from the African continent by 2023.
But it’s not only the donkeys who suffer. Farming communities in the developing world depend on these beasts of burden for their livelihood – from carrying water and plowing fields to transporting goods to market. Losing such a valuable animal has devastating consequences for all members of a family, especially who are largely responsible for food production.
While domestic and wild donkeys thousands of miles and continents away are at risk, so are BLM burros where there’s growing suspicion that they’re being sold, trucked to Mexico, slaughtered, and skinned so their hides can be shipped to China.
As Caroline Howe, Founder and Executive Director of the Horse Welfare Collective, explains, "While perhaps unintentional, the BLM's AIP seems to be supplying once federally protected burros to domestic slaughter marketing channels.”
Her review of United States Department of Agriculture shipping and health certificates between 2018 and 2021 shows an uptick in the number of burros shipped to Mexico for slaughter that’s consistent with the start of the AIP and the increase in demand for Ejiao.
The BLM’s own data also show a record number of burros were captured and removed between FY2018 and FY2021 – 7,137, to be exact. This year, it’s planning on removing another 2,800 or so, mostly by brutal helicopter roundups.
What You Can Do
When I looked out the kitchen window the other day, I saw Huck and Puck playing. Grabbing each other’s necks and legs, they wrestled, then reared up and trotted off before starting up again. It was a heartwarming sight. I think they’ve figured out that they’re safe now, that they’re home.
As much as Dick and I would like to adopt more burros, we can’t. But there’s still so much all of us can do to ensure that more burros (donkeys too!) and horses – both domestic and wild – don’t end up needing to be saved from kill pens and slaughter.
So, I invite you to visit AWHC’s Action Center and ask your legislators to support several equine protection bills, including the SAFE Act, Save America’s Forgotten Equines Act, (H.R. 3355/S. 2732) that would end equine slaughter in the United States and the Ejiao Act (H.R. 5203) that would ban the importation of Ejiao to this country.
You really can make a difference!