Water woes causing a lonely death for palm oasis

Corn Springs palm trees. (BLM)

Written by James Cornett
Special to The Desert Sun

In the middle of our own Colorado Desert exists a very lonely palm oasis. Known as Corn Spring, it is one of the most remote palm oases anywhere in the Southwest desert. It lies about 100 miles east of Palm Springs and about 10 miles south of Interstate 10, in the middle of the Chuckwalla Mountains.

I first visited Corn Springs and its small palm grove in the early 1970s. At that time it was a lush oasis dominated by desert fan palms, the same species of palm that lines Palm Canyon Drive in downtown Palm Springs.

The desert fan palm (Washingtonia filifera) is unique in that of the 2,500 or so species of palm on our planet, it is the only one whose dead fronds typically adhere to the trunk throughout the life of the tree. It is the second most widely planted palm in yards and parks in our region. Its close cousin, the tall and skinny Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta) is now, unfortunately, the most widely planted palm in the Coachella Valley. It does not usually show the characteristic fronds on the trunk.

Few palms at Corn Spring have dead fronds adhering to their trunks. In fact, few palms have any fronds at all, living or dead. The reason for this is the oasis is dying, one of the few palm oases in our desert that is expiring. This is strange since most palm oases in California, Nevada and Arizona are thriving as never before with dramatic increases in palm numbers compared with a half-century ago.

What gives with Corn Spring? Why are the palms dying?

Desert fan palms require lots of water and so are only found where water is at or near the surface; such places as desert springs, seeps, streams or rivers like the Colorado. In the desert, dying palms are inevitably a sign that the source of water is being exhausted or changing where it comes to the surface. One or the other of these explanations is happening at Corn Spring.

The Bureau of Land Management manages Corn Spring and most of the lands around it. The BLM placed a well at the oasis decades ago. Could it be that too much groundwater is being removed by the well? Not likely. The campground at the oasis is rarely used; most people bring in most of their water, hand pumped to the surface.

Tamarisk trees have been growing at the oases since at least 1980. Might the tamarisk trees be intercepting the groundwater with their roots before the palms get it? This could account for some water loss but palms usually crowd out tamarisk trees, not the other way around. Besides the palms and tamarisk trees have been living together for quite a while and for most of the time the palms were doing fine.

Most desert springs, such as Corn Spring, receive their water from the damming of underground flows by earth faults. Finely crushed soil (fault gouge) can be impermeable to water flow and groundwater may rise all the way to the surface. A fault has created the canyon in which Corn Spring lies. The damming of groundwater results in water rising to the surface at just the one place. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago desert fan palms seeds were brought to the spring, most likely by the ancestors of Cahuilla Indians. The seeds germinated and the young palms thrived in the warm climate of the Colorado Desert and in the moist soil at the spring.

Some time in the last 20 years or so, an earthquake resulted in a shifting of rock and alluvium along fault. It seems to have altered the movement of groundwater to the surface. Although some water was still available to the palms, most was not. Perhaps the underground dam was breached allowing the water to sink deeper into the earth.

An alternate explanation is that the aquifer (groundwater) was finite, filled during the last ice age when rainfall was more plentiful. With the drying out of the Southwest over the past 10,000 years, the aquifer is no longer sufficiently recharged and has become exhausted. No water is left for the palms and oasis slowly expires.

Whichever explanation is correct, the oasis is dying. Cutting down the tamarisk trees might help but will probably not alter the long-term prospects of the oasis.

James Cornett is a desert ecologist living in Palm Springs.

Volunteers Sought to Help Restore Bonanza Springs

News Release

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
California Desert District

Volunteers willing to roll up their sleeves for a day are needed to help restore Bonanza Springs. As part of the 15th annual National Public Lands Day, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008, volunteers will help eradicate tamarisk and arundo, which have endangered the spring’s vitality, as well as install a pedestrian pass-through gate, maintain and reclaim trails, and install natural stones from the wash as stepping stones.

Lunch will be provided to the first 50 registered volunteers. All volunteers will receive a free NPLD t-shirt and a pass good for one free entry, any day during the next year, at public land sites managed by the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM, or the US Army Corp of Engineers.

"Last year we reached a monumental participation of 110,000 volunteers on National Public Lands Day, and we are expecting to increase this by an additional 10,000 this year," said Robb Hampton, director of National Public Lands Day. This year, National Public Lands Day commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps and is sponsored for the ninth consecutive year by Toyota Motor Sales, USA.

Bonanza Springs is a small oasis 45 miles west of Needles, just north of Route 66 between Essex and Chambless, Calif. This small spring in the desert makes surrounding uplands inhabitable by wildlife for up to several miles.

Nearly a decade ago, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began clearing Bonanza Springs of noxious weeds, which were choking the life out of the springs. Tamarisk, often called salt cedar, is an evergreen shrub or tree growing to 50 feet in height and forming dense thickets. It can spread both by submerged stems and by seeds. Each flower can produce thousands of tiny seeds that are contained in a small capsule, usually adorned with a tuft of hair that aids in wind dispersal. Seeds can also be dispersed by water. Tamarisk species are fire-adapted and have long tap roots that allow them to intercept deep water tables and exploit natural water resources. They are able to limit competition from other plants by taking up salt from deep ground water, accumulating it in their foliage and depositing it in the surface soil. The salt build ups can be detrimental to other plants.

Arundo is a tall, perennial reed, growing in fresh and moderately saline water. It can grow to 30 feet in ideal conditions. This vegetative growth appears to be well adapted to floods, breaking up into individual clumps, spreading the pieces, then sprouting and colonizing further downstream. In 2007, BLM employees, with the help of volunteers, placed thick, black tarpaulins over the arundo to prevent light from reaching the plant, reducing its ability to photosynthesize. The lack of light eventually depletes the plants energy reserves, causing it to die back. Since the tarps have been in place for more than a year, they will be picked up and moved to other spots within the Bonanza Springs area.

To find out more about the project, including what to bring, directions, or to register as a volunteer, please contact Elaine Downing at edowning@ca.blm.gov or (760) 326-7003, or visit the website, Needles Field Office - Volunteer Program.

Eradication of Santa Cruz Island pigs deemed a success

Park Service and Nature Conservancy say endangered native species now have a chance to rebound.

Prohunt species eradication team on Santa Cruz Island.
By Gregory W. Griggs, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

Efforts to restore the ecosystem on Santa Cruz Island to its native state reached a milestone this week as scientists said that a two-year program to eliminate feral pigs had been a success.

Although the last confirmed pig death was last year, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, which owns 75% of the island, have been monitoring the results of the $5-million eradication effort since then to gauge the program's effects.

They say the island's endangered species are rebounding.

A total of 5,036 feral pigs were killed on the island 18 miles off the Ventura County coast. They were considered a threat to the endangered island fox and nine rare plants.

"Santa Cruz Island had 150 years of nonnative animals and plants, so it's not something we can solve overnight, but at this point we think things are looking very favorable," said Kate Faulkner, the Park Service's chief of natural resources management. "This allows us to move our resources to look at other plants and animals on the island."

Faulkner said her agency, which owns a quarter of the 96-square-mile island, and the conservancy expect to spend $3 million over the next three years to study and improve conditions for native plants.

"We're trying to look ahead to anticipate what the problems might be for plants and animals that are unique to the island," Faulkner said. Removing the pigs, and tens of thousands of sheep before them, "will do a lot to move the ecosystem forward," she added.

With the last confirmed pig death on July 5, 2006, native plants, such as oak trees, could begin to rebound, biologists said.

Lotus Vermeer, director of the conservancy's Santa Cruz Island Preserve, said acorns -- a primary source of the pigs' diet -- can again be spotted, and oak seedlings have begun to sprout

"Because all the pigs are removed from the island, we think we have a fighting chance," she said. "It's a unique time for the foxes and for plant recovery."

The pigs were targeted for extermination to save the Santa Cruz Island fox, a cat-sized creature found only on the island. The fox was being preyed upon by golden eagles, which Park Service officials say came to the Channel Islands in the 1990s to feed on these nonnative pigs.

Sheep ranchers began using Santa Cruz in the 1850s and introduced pigs as farm animals. Before long, pigs escaped into the wild and over the decades disrupted native plants, spread seeds of nonnative plants and uncovered archaeological sites of Chumash Indian settlements.

In April 2005, the Park Service hired Prohunt Inc., a New Zealand-based company, to track down the pigs using helicopters with snipers, traps, dogs and electronic collars. Officials said the methods were "following euthanasia guidelines set forth by the American Medical Veterinary Assn."

"We deny that vehemently," said Richard M. Feldman, a Santa Barbara businessman who sued the park's owners, saying the killings were inhumane and that the Park Service violated its own rules and procedures when it approved the environmental data to support the eradication.

Feldman's suit was dismissed and is currently under submission to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Elliot M. Katz, a Northern California veterinarian who is founder and president of In Defense of Animals, joined in the lawsuit and a second one filed to stop the killing of more than 100 wild turkeys that proliferated once the pigs were gone.

"Obviously, we'd like to stop the government's killing machine, but it's a difficult thing to do. It's a shame," Katz said. "They tend to be very aggressive when it comes to killing other species. As compassion and concern grows in our country, we hope they'll be forced to become responsive."

Burro ouster called an environmental necessity

Amanda Lucidon / The Press-Enterprise
Wranglers and officials gather around a helicopter as they go over details of removing wild burros from the California desert.

U.S. says Mojave ouster necessary

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

On the eastern edge of San Bernardino County, a piece of the Old West came to an end this week, with the help of a modern-day wrangler in the sky.

Wranglers and officials gather around a helicopter as they go over details of removing wild burros from the California desert.

A thudding helicopter emerged from the distant folds of the desert and darted around power lines. The pilot nudged wild burros at a fast clip through several miles of the creosote-dotted landscape.

The burros, young and old, were driven from their longtime home around Clark Mountain, the nearly 8,000-foot chalky-brown peak that gave the Clark herd its name. Like thousands before them, the burros will be put up for adoption.

Although these particular burros couldn't have known any better, they wandered into a part of the Mojave National Preserve and a neighboring valley considered by the federal government to be critical for the survival of the desert tortoise. Once there, the burros munched on the same plants needed by the lumbering reptiles, officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said.

Although cattle -- which eat the same plants -- also roam the area, they are managed by a rancher who keeps them moving, said Edythe Seehafer, an environmental planner for the bureau. The burros, she said, are left up to their own devices.

"The deciding factor was, could we keep them out," she said, referring to Shadow Valley. The answer was no. "They're animals. They migrate."

A secondary reason dates back to the 1994 California Desert Protection Act. The act transferred 37,000 acres in and around the Clark Mountain range to the National Park Service as a unit of the new Mojave National Preserve.

The move, according to a bureau study, transferred the only year-round springs in the eastern portion of the herd area to the preserve. A management plan drafted later for the preserve said the agency would fence off their sprawling unit, a move the bureau said would put the burros in trouble in the arid landscape where water resources are precious and few.

Larry Whalon, the preserve's resources chief, said the burros are not native to the area -- and they simply wanted to protect the land with the fence if the herd stayed.

Seehafer said the main issue was that burros out-compete tortoises for food, which is especially problematic in years of drought when less vegetation grows.

Thus, in a three-day roundup that ended Friday, the bureau and its contractors gathered 96 burros and drove them for three hours to Ridgecrest, where they will be put up for adoption. The removal effort was estimated to cost $70,000, said Alex Neibergs, a bureau wild horse and burro specialist.

Since 1977, some 3,500 wild horses and burros have been removed from the California desert, said Dick Crowe, a bureau regional planner. They are the descendants of those brought by mining prospectors and Spanish colonists hundreds of years ago.

The hardy animals flourished in the desert because they reproduce quickly, have few natural predators and low incidents of disease.

Today's desert is much different, Seehafer said, with an imperiled tortoise whose habitat has been taken over by homes, shopping malls and an expanded military base: the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, near Barstow.

The burro-gathering site was less than a mile north of Interstate 15, within eyesight of traffic and casinos across the Nevada border in Primm.

"There are more and more pressures on the desert, and the desert really can't absorb all those pressures," Seehafer said. "It's not like the desert is a real lush place, anyways."

Today, there are only two wild-burro herds of any significant size that remain in the desert, and they roam near the Colorado River, Crowe said.

As 28 burros were rounded up Thursday, five activists concerned about the animals' welfare fanned out across the range, watching the activity through binoculars after losing an appeal filed with the bureau to stop the event altogether.

"It's a very sad thing for Americans to loose this part of their heritage," said Jennifer Foster, of Hesperia. She spoke passionately about the burros as gentle animals, and said she considered their removal an eradication.

Katie Blunk, a veterinarian with a unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, checked the animals after they were funneled into a chute and a holding pen by horse-straddling wranglers waving white flags that rattled.

Blunk said they looked fine, even the last bunch that one of the activists said appeared to have been pushed too fast by the helicopter.

"They're not breathing hard, they barely broke a sweat," she said, as she watched the animals in the pen.

Blunk's assessment did little to soothe Foster. She said primitive apparatus called arrastras, which were pulled by burros to crush the mined ore, still remain in the nearby mountains.

"Without them," Foster said of the burros, "the West would have never been able to be settled."

It's roundup time for burros

Herding wild burros - Contractors for the BLM use a helicopter and horses in Ivanpah Valley to round up wild burros. Eric Reed/Staff photographer


Andrew Silva, Staff Writer
SB Sun

As the sun climbed over the mountains, brightening a cold, still morning, the clang, clang, clang of a temporary fence post being pounded into the desert by two cowboys broke the silence.

A yellow helicopter buzzed in the distance, swooping back and forth over the scrubby California terrain near Primm, Nev., its pilot scouting the area between the Clark Mountain range to the north and busy Interstate 15 to the south.

Cowboys and women pulled steel fence sections out of a trailer to set up a corral.

It was time to round up a herd of burros that have called the eastern Mojave Desert home for at least 150 years, maybe longer.

"There's always the idea they are from pioneering the historic West," said Alex Neiberg, the wild horse and burro specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "These are living symbols."

But the burros are considered non- native, and in the decades-long battle to protect the fragile desert, federal land managers decided the animals have to go.

The listing of the desert tortoise as a threatened species in 1990 and the creation of the Mojave National Preserve in 1994 spelled the end for the free-roaming, long-eared icons of the mining and settlement eras.

Biologists worry the burros are a threat to the declining number of desert tortoises, competing for forage and possibly stepping on tortoises or their burrows.

That's nonsense, say some activists fighting to keep the burros on the desert.

"There are too few burros," said Jennifer Foster of Hesperia, who's been trying to save the herd from being purged from the desert. "The burros on Clark Mountain played a historic role in the settlement of the West."

She argued the Clark Mountain herd is genetically unique, with a lineage going back hundreds of years, and should be preserved under federal laws protecting wild burros and historic objects.

As the crew from Utah went to work, Foster and her husband, Ken, sat in their car about a quarter-mile away on a dirt road just north of I-15.

A group of BLM rangers prevented anyone from going toward the corral until the contractor and the BLM's Neiberg were sure it was safe.

Foster hoped her phone would ring with news about an appeal she had pending in front of a judge, seeking to stop the roundup, actually called a "gather."

The call never came.

The judge eventually turned down the request to leave the animals on the land, said Stephen Razo, spokesman for the BLM's California desert district office.

Foster and her husband were joined by Diana Chontos of Olancha, a tiny town on Highway 395 in the foothills of the eastern Sierra Nevada. Chontos' white pickup, parked behind the Fosters' car, sports a personalized license plate: BURRROS.

Chontos established the Wild Burro Rescue and Preservation Project more than 15 years ago as an alternative to a plan to shoot burros in Death Valley, she said. She now cares for 187 burros, supported by donations from members of her organization.

"It seems the goal is not to have a single wild burro left on public land," said Chontos, wearing a poncho and cowboy hat. "The American people want them. People travel from all over the country - `where are the burros?' The only ones they see are at my place."

Out at the gather area, two lines of fence posts were draped with burlap netting, stretching out more than 100 yards and forming a wide "V," called a jute.

The jute acts as a funnel to guide the burros toward the corral.

By late Wednesday morning, after the helicopter had completed a couple of runs, BLM officials began shuttling Foster and the others, two or three at a time, down the dirt road to inspect the burros.

A little after 11 a.m., Greg Cook, 53, of Vernal, Utah, joined his crew on a break to have lunch and a soda.

Picture a cowboy, and Cook is it.

Rail thin with a thick gray mustache, he and his wife run KG Livestock and oversee a group of cheerful, energetic young people who seem more in tune with the 19th century than the 21st.
They spend much of the year traveling the West gathering wild horses and burros for the government.

"I like the animals. I like the burros; I like the horses," Cook said, standing next to the trailer where the long gray and white ears of about 10 burros poked above the side. "It's a good way of living."
There's more to it than it looks, he said.

"So many things to watch for - our own saddle horses, each other, the gates. It's a really tough thing to do," he said. "It takes quite a bit of patience so you don't hurt them."

Adam Goodrich, 20, sitting on the trailer fender, said, "It's out of the ordinary."

As they relaxed and joked around, the radio came to life, with helicopter pilot Rick Harmon saying he was a mile out.

The crew jumped up, with several getting on their horses and grabbing 5-foot-long wands with small strips of cloth at the end.

Chontos, the burro activist from Olancha, walked past the loaded trailer to head back down the road and said to the burros: "Goodbye, sweeties. You're going off to the slave trade."

The helicopter, its skids at times brushing the tops of the creosote bushes, moved the burros toward the jute.

Once in the jute, the horse riders moved the burros toward the corral, flicking the wands beside and above the animals to drive them forward.

Once in the corral and then into the narrow chute, the crew used the signature rapid-fire whistling of a cowboy, along with pleading and pushing, to get the burros boarded.

"Come on. C'mon. There you go," one cowboy in the chute said, until another burro stepped off the trailer and headed back down the wrong way. "Hey. Hey!"

The 96 burros gathered Wednesday and Thursday were taken to a holding area in Ridgecrest and will later be made available for adoption. They cannot, by law, be sold for slaughter.

Neiberg said the effort will continue, perhaps with water trapping, maybe another gather next year, until the herd is "zeroed out," as required by the federal management plans.

There are only a couple of ranges left where burro herds will be allowed to remain - one on the western side of the Colorado River, and another in the area of the Chocolate Mountains between Yuma and Blythe, said Dick Crowe of the BLM.

Foster and the others are heartbroken the burros are disappearing from the sprawling landscape

"Once they're gone, they're gone," Foster said. "... It'll be a sad day when I can't bring my little grandchildren to see burros in their native range."

The Last Burros of the Mojave Desert

The Huffington Post
by Deanne Stillman

The time has come to speak of the animals in attendance at the nativity, especially the burro, the stubborn, steadfast, and hardy little four-legged who has served us well through the ages, with barely a tip of the hat in the annals.

It was a burro that carried Mary and Joseph to the stable where Christ was born, a burro that carried Christ into Jerusalem for one of his last acts, a burro that accompanied his followers into other empires and across time, finally helping trappers, prospectors, and soldiers make their way into the Old Testament scenery of the American West.

Since then his descendants have lived in the desert, fending off predators, joy riders with guns, and government round-ups. But now the burros' time in the Mojave may be coming to an end, because of a federal policy of "zeroing out" the herds in areas where other critters and half-baked attempts to manage water that has already been mismanaged have taken precedence.

And who are these burros exactly? Well, let's meet Brighty, one of our western pioneers. There's a statue of Brighty the burro in the Grand Canyon Lodge. Brighty lived at the Grand Canyon from 1892 to 1922, along with countless other burros whose ancestors had come with the Spanish and carried the ensuing parade.

Named after the Bright Angel Creek in the canyon, Brighty originally belonged to a gold prospector. When the prospector was killed, Brighty was adopted by the park service. He helped build the canyon's first suspension bridge across the Colorado River and carried Teddy Roosevelt's packs on a hunt for mountain lions. He was an icon of the West when he died, and it would seem only fitting that the government honor his life by making sure that others of his kind could flourish in their desert home.

As I've written on this site, passage of the federal Free-Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act in 1971 spearheaded by Wild Horse Annie did exactly that - but in spirit only. It gave authority for mustangs and burros to the Bureau of Land Management, which meant that other agencies such as the National Park Service could make their own policy towards these animals if they lived on NPS land. To the park service, burros were not free-roaming but non-native, which meant that they had to go (see article on wild horses).

In 1979, the extirpation began - with Brighty's enduring family.

Because getting them out of the Grand Canyon would be difficult, all 577 of them were to be shot.

The late writer and animal defender Cleveland Amory intervened, along with his organization, the Fund for Animals, putting together a daring and complicated rescue in which the burros were airlifted from the canyon and taken to his Black Beauty Ranch in Texas, which he founded for this occasion. But that was the beginning of the end for the burro in national parks and preserves.

Since then, NPS has continued its policy of "direct reduction," and thousands of burros have either been shot by contract hunters or harried to their doom or into overcrowded government adoption pipelines in cruel airborne round-ups. From 1987 to 1994, the park service shot 400 burros in Death Valley alone - just one of various burro sites all over the desert West. When Death Valley went from monument to park status in 94, the park service amped up its plans to remove burros - and Death Valley's remaining wild horses. But another friend of the burro stepped up, just in time.

This was Diana Chontos, In 1990, the long-time rescuer of burros had taken six of them and made a two-year cross country wilderness trek through California to draw attention to their plight. When she heard about what was about to happen to the Death Valley burros in 94, she approached NPS with a plan.

After lengthy and difficult talks, she and NPS came to an agreement: the agency would not shoot burros if her organization, Wild Burro Rescue in Olancha, California just to the west of Death Valley, would organize, pay for, and remove the burros themselves. And that's what she's been doing since then.

"These annual live captures are conducted in hazardous conditions in rugged and remote mountain wilderness," she says. She almost died of renal failure at a recent capture because she just couldn't get enough water over a six-day period. And there were only two people doing the capture - she and her late partner, Tom Allewelt, who trimmed the hooves of the rescued burros and horses and helped to gentle them at their sanctuary in the Owens Valley.

There are still a few burros in Death Valley and soon, perhaps sometime next year, another capture will be planned - if she can raise the funds and head off a park service hunt. And that's the only reason she takes the burros out of the park - not for adoption, which is BLM policy.

On January 19th, 2007, the burros that live in the Clark Mountains of the Mojave Desert - the last in that region - will be gone, taken in a federal round-up (in this case by the BLM, which manages the area in question), perhaps memorialized like Brighty in a statue at the Mojave National Preserve, which has now turned its sights on that particular herd, whose home turf is the highest peak in that part of the desert at 7929 feet. This is on the north side of the preserve and sometimes if you're driving east on I-15, you can see them hanging out at Excelsior Mine Road.

As with wild horses, there's a dispute about exactly how many burros are left. Locals say maybe 30; the feds say 2-300. There's also a dispute over access to water, which was closed off when the park service took over part of the burros' range. NPS originally agreed to have water piped back into the BLM part of the burros' range, but then reversed course.

"Concerned citizens have volunteered labor and materials to complete the simple project at no cost to taxpayers," says Virginie Parant, of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. But so far, plans for the round-up are still in place. In 2005, another herd was taken off the preserve, and - according to the desert grapevine - two may have been shot in the process; there are photos of one burro with a bullet to the head circulating the ethers (although it's not clear which round-up that came from) and another was allegedly run to the point of exhaustion and death - the rumor is that he died a very slow and painful death as the contractors may have stood by. Not surprising if true; I have heard of and been an eyewitness to a staggering amount of tax-subsidized government abuse before, during, and after round-ups of wild horses and burros.

"They are destroying our Western heritage," says Jennifer Foster, a 23-year resident of Hesperia near the preserve. Jennifer and her husband Ken are two of a small group of high-desert locals who are planning a legal action to stop this impending and most final act.

At a recent BLM public comments meeting in Barstow, Mojave native Bobby Parker asked preserve officials if they knew of any studies that showed how the desert tortoise was faring since burro removal had been amped up in the region, given the fact that the burro is said to have a negative impact on the endangered species and that's one of the reasons it's being removed. No one could answer the question. (And by the way, the tortoise is one of my totems and I'm all in favor if its protection. But the Mojave is one vast creche indeed, with plenty of room at the inn for all manner of creatures, especially when water sources aren't blocked off).

A few months ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote a letter to the Interior Department, suggesting that when she lobbied for the Desert Protection Act which passed in 1994, she didn't intend for all burros to be eliminiated from the Mojave. The letter is posted here, along with information about other actions that can be taken. Asked about the letter at the hearing, officials said it had no bearing on their mandate.

Burros have much to tell us, as Diana Chontos says. In 2000, she rescued a burro from Death Valley and called him Yaqui. "He was respected by all of the younger jacks- the male burros - and they didn't chase him from food or water. He loved to be brushed and hugged. But one day he began to grow weak and could no longer get up from his naps without being helped and towards the end we rigged a blanket for shade and called a vet to ease his passing. One by one all 32 jacks came by and touched him some place on his body, then went back to their hay. Shortly after the last jack paid his respects, Yaqui took a deep breath and died." He was 50 years old, the vet said, the oldest equine he had ever seen. Had he helped a miner named Pegleg Pete find water? Maybe he had once led a lost pilgrim back to the trail. Or maybe he just lived in the Mojave Desert - for a long time, until he had to go.

THIS IS DEDICATED TO BARRY BRESLOW, TIRELESS ADVOCATE FOR WILD BURROS, WHO PASSED AWAY IN 2006, AND THE 49 BURROS WHO WERE GUNNED DOWN BY CULPRITS UNKNOWN ON GOOD FRIDAY, 1990, OUTSIDE OATMAN, ARIZONA.

Roundup opposed

Chuck Mueller, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun [San Bernardino, CA]

Ken and Jennifer Foster of Hesperia are battling to save a herd of wild burros that roam freely on the lower slopes of Clark Mountain in the eastern Mojave Desert.

They are among a group of animal-rights advocates opposing a plan by a federal agency to capture as many as 150 burros in a proposed helicopter-assisted roundup Jan. 19.

The plan is to put the burros up for adoption as pets.

Three federal agencies are involved in the decision to remove the burros from land controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management: the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the BLM.

Neither the Park Service nor Fish and Wildlife want the burros. They are banned from the national parks because they are not native and compete with native creatures for survival. Fish and Wildlife says they compete with the endangered desert tortoise.

The Fosters paint a colorful picture of the burros from Western lore. "These animals are a living heritage of the Old West," Jennifer Foster said. "It would be a complete travesty to remove them from their native range."

Her husband says: "They're as much a part of the West as the horse and wagon and should be left to graze where they've been over 100 years."

The Bureau of Land Management, which administers rangeland at Clark Mountain, sees burro removal as a necessity.

"Part of the herd area contains critical habitat of the endangered desert tortoise," said BLM's John Dearing. "And creation of the Mojave National Preserve in 1994 transferred the only springs (at Clark Mountain) with yearlong surface water to the National Park Service."

Also in 1994, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that wild burros be banned from grazing in desert wildlife management areas, including the herd area at Clark Mountain, to help restore tortoise populations.

Meanwhile, the park service management plan for the Clark Mountain area called for removing burros from the new national preserve and fencing off burros from the water sources.

A public meeting on the proposed burro roundup will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the BLM's Barstow field office, 2601 Barstow Road. Public comments on an environmental assessment for the proposal will be accepted until Dec. 29 at the bureau's Needles field office, 1303 South Highway 95.

The bureau estimates there are 100 to 150 wild burros within or adjacent to the 233,000-acre Clark Mountain herd area. An adjacent 37,000 acres on the mountain is in the national preserve.

The bureau's burro capture plan calls for rounding up the animals and placing them in BLM's national wild horse and burro adoption program, administered at Ridgecrest.

"Under the proposal, the capture and removal of wild burros would be aided by a helicopter at gathering sites," Dearing said. "The helicopter would be used to locate and herd targeted animals to capture sites."

Wranglers on the ground would corral the burros.

Two other roundup methods are also proposed: trapping animals by enticing them with hay or luring them to water sites. Attracted by hay or water, the burros would be captured in portable pens with gates triggered after the animals were inside.

The environmental assessment of the capture plan said wranglers would ensure the burros are treated humanely.

But Jennifer Foster calls helicopter captures dangerous for the animals.

"During a roundup last September, a beautiful jack ran until it collapsed, and then was dragged by ropes by two mounted wranglers," she said.

The animals were abused by one of the wranglers, Foster said, and "one was left to die a very agonizing death over 14 to 16 hours."

The Fosters, 25-year residents of Hesperia who founded a lobbying group called Public Lands for Public Use, have owned horses and burros for three decades. They recently acquired 10 Clark Mountain burros from the bureau's wild horse and burro adoption program and plan to take them to animal sanctuaries, they said.

"We both love animals," Ken Foster said. "A big share of our lives has been devoted to riding and caring for horses and burros."

"We absolutely must stop this roundup," said Jennifer Foster. "If we don't, these living symbols of the Old West will be gone forever."