Comments Due February 28, 2012
The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM's) Yuma, Arizona Field Office is seeking public comments on an Environmental Assessment for a massive burro roundup and removal plan. The agency plans to use helicopters to stampede and capture 400 wild burros in the Cibola-Trigo Herd Management Area (HMA) in southwestern Arizona and permanently remove 350 of them from their home in this remote and rugged region on the border of California.
The BLM allows just 165 burros (and 150 wild horses) to live in this 179,000-acre, or 280-square-mile, public land area. The agency estimates that the current burro population is 711. In developing this roundup plan, the BLM ignored the comments of thousands of citizens who wrote to the agency in May of 2010 requesting that the allowable management level for burros be increased; that the burros be managed with humane and reversible PZP fertility control instead of removals; and that humane alternatives to helicopter stampedes be implemented if roundups occur.
Even worse, the agency has added a controversial new aspect to the plan that involves castrating 50 Jacks (male burros) and returning them to the range. The BLM is proceeding with this radical sterilization plan despite a complete lack of analysis of its impacts and a pending federal lawsuit challenging a similar plan for "managing" wild horses in Nevada.
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.Please take action below to help Arizona burros and oppose this devastating roundup, removal and castration plan!
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