Arizona Urges Federal Agency To Act On Burro Population

Published: Monday, January 25, 2016 - 7:55am
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(Photo courtesy of the Arizona Game and Fish Department)
Pat Barber is the Region IV supervisor for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
(Photo courtesy of the Arizona Game and Fish Department)
The state estimates there are 1,450 burros in the Black Mountains of northwest Arizona.
(Photo courtesy of the Arizona Game and Fish Department)
State officials warn a drought could cause an ecological disaster if nothing is done to address the burro population.

State officials have joined Mohave County in calling on Washington D.C. to do something about the number of burros in northwestern Arizona’s Black Mountains.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department estimates the region’s burro population to be about 1,450. That’s more than the federal government’s most recent estimate of about 1,100 and more than triple the optimal number of 478. 

The burros are not native to the area, and that means flora have not evolved to withstand their environmental impact, according to Pat Barber, Region IV supervisor for Game and Fish.

“If things dry out and the rain stops we could be looking at a pretty large scale ecological disaster where they would just totally annihilate habitat in these areas for native wildlife,”  Barber said.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said this week that they are closely monitoring the situation, and the agency removed about 130 burros from the area last year.

Federal officials have previously explored contraception as a possible long-term solution to the problem, but Barber said the burro population is so large that it would take generations before birth control would have the desired impact.

“Birth control may someday be a viable solution, but right now it is not,” Barber said. “The science is not there. They don’t have the drugs or the methodology to implement it effectively.”

Local, state and federal officials agree they’d prefer not to hunt or euthanize the burros. That leaves adoption as the best option to address the issue, but Barber said federal budgets get eaten up by the cost to house burros after they’re captured.

“So we have been talking to BLM, trying to develop an approach to actually maybe invest some of their funding into marketing to actually try to increase burro adoption,” Barber said.

It costs the BLM about $2 a day to hold one burro in a pasture and about $5 dollars per day to keep one in a corral.