Burros are amazing, hardy animals who manage to survive under the harshest conditions. Sadly, just like their wild horse cousins, they cling to a tenuous existence in a shrinking habitat on our public lands and struggle under a management program that rounds them up and removes them from their homes on the range in the American West.
Just like wild horses, wild free-roaming burros face many hardships, including ever-shrinking habitat and a federal "management" program that rounds them up in large numbers and removes them from the range to keep burro populations artificially low.
Since 1971, when Congress unanimously passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the number of burros in the West has declined dramatically.
Congress passed the Act stating that protection for these animals was needed because "these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene." So when the first federal census, conducted in 1974, found 14, 656 burros living on Forest Service (FS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands it was understood that was a low number. By 1978, after four years of federal "management," fewer than 10,000 burros remained. Today just 6,825 burros remain on BLM land and under 1,000 on FS land. During this same time period, their designated habitat area has been reduced by half.
Complicating the burros' struggle for survival even more is the fact that the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act only applies only to mustangs and burros living in designated areas on FS and BLM lands. On other federal lands, such as those administered by the National Park Service, and on state lands, these animals are considered to be "exotic" and "feral" and are subject to eradication plans.
