The transcript of the inquiry I received came complete with the investigating officer's findings and recommendations. The only fault he could find with the indiscriminate killing of a protected species was that the people doing the killing hadn't bothered to notify the park's employees in advance that they would be shooting burros in the park. If they had known in advance that the shootings were taking place, they wouldn't have been surprised to find the rotting burro carcasses beside the road, nor worried that anything untoward was going on.

He recommended that in the future, all park employees be better informed about the park's wildlife management programs and that proper arrangements should be made to deal with the disposal of the carcasses. Nowhere in his findings or in his recommendations does he mention that burros are a protected animal in the United States or that perhaps they should investigate alternative means of wildlife management instead of killing them.

It took a 25-year fight by concerned citizens and wildlife conservationists to get the American Congress to pass The Wild-Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971. Thirty-six years later, officers and directors of Public Parks in Texas are flagrantly disregarding the two major provisions of the act. Not only are they depriving the animal of habitat desperately needed to maintain the numbers of wild burros in America, they are also killing them in order to facilitate their supplanting.

Currently there are only five genetically viable burro herds remaining in the wild. If the current rate of attrition of both habitat and animals is allowed to continue, it will result in the extinction of wild burro herds in the American West.

Is this how America preserves its cultural heritage?

Facts and figures concerning the relative sizes of burro herds and Big Horn Sheep populations and habitat, unless otherwise stated, are taken from "Wild Burros of the American West: A Critical Analysis of the National Status of Wild Burros on Public Lands 2006" by C.R. MacDonald