BLM Gathering 60 Wild Burros from Bullhead City for Adoption

BULLHEAD CITY – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is rounding up about 60 wild burros in the Bullhead City area for adoption over the next three weeks. This initiative aims to address concerns raised by private landowners and county officials regarding incidents involving wild burros.

The burros will be transported to the BLM’s adoption center in Florence, where they will be available for public adoption. For information on how to adopt a burro, visit www.blm.gov.

The goal of the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program is to utilize all available management tools under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to ensure the animals are healthy and thriving on public rangelands.

Controversial Sterilization Measures

In related news, the House Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment on June 6 that authorizes the BLM to manage wild horse and burro populations using surgical sterilization. The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) harshly criticized this action as a major step toward the destruction of America’s wild herds.

“If passed by Congress, this will be the beginning of the end of the iconic free-roaming wild horses and burros of the American West,” Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Conservation, said in a prepared statement.

Roy added that the mass sterilization involves invasive, high-risk surgeries to remove the ovaries of mares, which were rejected by the National Academy of Sciences. This procedure would fundamentally alter their reproductive hormones and destroy their free-roaming natural behaviors, which are essential to their wild nature.

Complicating the situation, Roy noted, is the cost of the procedures and the fact that they would be conducted under non-sterile conditions in the field or at BLM short-term holding facilities.

Population Control Efforts

The BLM has been baiting and trapping female burros in the Black Mountain Herd Management Area since August, in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States, to reduce the population. The female burros, or “jennies,” are inoculated with the immunocontraceptive vaccine Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP).

“Once we get the animals into the corral, we check their health and well-being and we check their gender, and for jennies, they get the PZP and usually within 24 hours they’re back on the range,” BLM spokesman Adam Eggers told the Daily Miner in February.

As of February 2, the BLM had gathered 96 females from the Black Mountain area, with a target of 160 females. “It’s something we’re very interested in seeing how the data comes out,” Eggers said. “There’s not going to be one end-all, be-all solution to burro population control. The way to success is multiple strategies.”

Originally posted by Daily Miner