While it's despicable in the first place to re-introduce an animal into the wild just so you can hunt it, displacing another animal and calling it "Wild Life Management" is hypocrisy of the highest order. What's been happening is a smear campaign that would be worthy of any dis-information program run by the current administration. First, start referring to the burros as feral and exotic instead of wild so it sounds like they were a recently introduced species instead of having been here longer than almost all breeds of domestic cattle.

Like the horse, the burro was re-introduced to North America in the 15th and 16th century with the arrival of the Spanish. The burro was especially adaptable to the climate of the Southern United States and Mexico, as the breed that came with the Spanish had originated in North Africa. Not only does it require minimal amounts of water for survival, it can also obtain most of its required water from the scrub brush that makes up the majority of its diet.

Like horses, burros were at various points in time released into the wild and then vanished into the wilderness that could support little other wildlife. It's only been since another introduced creature — man — wanted to make use of its habitat that the burro became a "Wild Life Management" issue. Unlike horses, they weren't even a concern for cattle ranchers because they lived in territories that couldn't sustain cattle.

Once state governments became aware of just how potentially lucrative the Big Horn Sheep hunt could be, (with licenses fetching up to $100,000 each at auctions), burros became a nuisance creature that needed to be dealt with. All of a sudden we hear they are a threat to water supplies, their populations are too high, and they are a threat to the precious Big Horn Sheep gold mine.

What's even more disquieting is that many of the Big Horn Sheep are being introduced into areas where there was no prior sheep population. In fact the Arizona Desert Big Horn Sheep Society boasts that over 1,000 animals have been introduced and have established viable populations in ten mountain ranges where they didn't previously exist.

Recently I received documents that are a record of an investigation into the discovery of burro carcasses in Big Bend Ranch State Park in Texas. As these documents have not yet been made public, my source has asked to remain anonymous for the time being. The documents in question are the transcripts of interviews conducted by an Internal Affairs officer who was following up on complaints of potential animal cruelty.

Park rangers, having discovered the bodies of burros rotting by the road in the park, dutifully reported the crime to state authorities. The only problem was that the shootings had been carried out by the Deputy Director of Texas State Parks, Dan Sholly, and States Parks Region 1 Director, Michael Hill, with the full support of the State Parks Director, Walter D. Danby. When interviewed in early November, the three men freely admitted that the killings had taken place, and had only just recently stopped.