For a lot of people, when they think about the Grand Canyon, they may think about the views, the Colorado River at the bottom or the layers of rock between the rim and the river. But lots of people also think about the wildlife, including burros.
The animals are not native to the Grand Canyon, and have a complicated history with the park, and the region. Abbie Harlow has studied and written about it; she’s a Ph.D. candidate in Arizona State University’s School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Her dissertation is on the historical use and cultural significance of burros and mules in the American West.
She spoke with The Show — starting with how burros got to the Grand Canyon in the first place.
Full conversation
ABBIE HARLOW: So burros were introduced to North America by Spanish conquistadors. We believe about the 1500s. And their population stayed pretty small for a long time until prospectors started coming into the canyon. And they always, just as we picture them, were accompanied with their little burro companion and they soon found out that the canyon was not as hospitable and as rich in gold as they originally thought. And many of them either abandoned their burros in the canyon or the borough got away from them. And so while the prospectors left, the burros stayed and they did very well in the canyon.
MARK BRODIE: What is it about that area that seems so habitable for them?
HARLOW: Well, so the burrows that were brought over, evolved in North Africa in the desert. And they're really well suited to our desert climate because it's pretty similar, not a lot of, not a lot of grass, but they do well on eating desert shrubs and do well without a lot of water. And so the burros just did what they were evolved to do and subsisted on in the desert and seem to do very well.
BRODIE: What kind of impact did their presence have on native species, either other animals or plants? You know, once their numbers really started multiplying.
HARLOW: So that's, that's the ultimate question, right? That, that's been debated on whether burros should stay or not is. what are they doing to the environment? And a lot of the reason for the call for removal in the 20th century was claims of burros kind of eroding soil, compact soil, ruining trails.
Burros tend to, because there isn't a lot of water, they dig water holes. And the main concern as always in the desert with limited forage was the competition that burros have, directly with bighorn sheep, they eat the same stuff. So burros tend to be bigger, a little more aggressive than bighorn sheep. And so they push them out of the areas.
BRODIE: So at what point, you mentioned the idea of, of burro removal. At what point did that become the policy or become something that people became concerned about and, and started thinking about it and acting on trying to get rid of some of these burros.
HARLOW: Burro removal was almost immediately a concern in the Grand Canyon. So we had the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916 and the first director of the park, Stephen Mather, he in 1920 called the burros evil and, and called for their removal pretty much immediately.
Burro culling began annually in 1924 and no one really paid any attention to it. So the park just went in and hired hunters every year to go in and, and shoot as many burrows as possible. The population always remained. But that was pretty much the policy from the beginning.
BRODIE: Was the goal to really eradicate burros there or was it just a matter of, there are too many of them. Maybe we just need fewer of them.
HARLOW: A bit of both. It wasn't till later that the idea of full eradication even seemed possible. In the ‘20s and ‘30s, the idea was just to keep the populations low, keep them away from the main trails. And part of the really interest in removing burros is because they weren't interesting. They, the park wanted tourists to come to the Grand Canyon and see bighorn sheep and mule deer and elk and burros were just boring. So, it was at least to keep the population low enough that they didn't interfere with tourism.
BRODIE: What, what about them was so boring. I'm, I'm curious what, like, what attributes make a, make a burro boring.
HARLOW: Well, it's so interesting because we then see, later on people are much more interested in burros because for us and, and by like the ‘70s and ‘80s, they're not commonplace. You don't see burros all over. But in the ‘20s and ‘30s, they were just the lowly burro, they were the pack animal, they were the beasts of burden. So it wasn't as exciting as seeing like exotic to people's wildlife.
BRODIE: So obviously, you know, some number of years later, there's sort of a, a role reversal where the, the call is not to eliminate all the burros, but maybe to stop trying to eliminate all the burros at, at Grand Canyon. What led to that, to that sort of shift in philosophy?
HARLOW: Well, so the National Park Service never shifted there. They planned to get rid of the burros from the beginning and never really wavered. The main change was that people started paying attention. In the early years, it was easy to never even notice the burro hunts and not really pay attention.
But by the ‘60s, you have this rising interest in environmentalism and at the same time, growing interest in animal advocacy. So you have these different groups that all of a sudden are paying attention to the environment and the animals and specifically in the ‘60s, a huge lobbying effort for the, what would later pass as the Wild Horse and Burro Act in 1971.
BRODIE: So I've got to ask you about one burro in particular who seems to have maybe plays played an outsized role in, in raising people's awareness of the situation of the Grand Canyon. A burro named Brighty.
HARLOW: Yeah, Brighty of the Grand Canyon. He's probably the most famous burro in the Grand Canyon, possibly in the country. He was a real burro in the 1920s and he lived in the Grand Canyon. He was probably an old prospector’s borough that got loose and he lived a bit of a semi-feral life.
He would come and let children ride him and walk around camps. But then if anyone tried to make him do real work, he'd run off. And he was just a, one of those popular characters of the Canyon for a long time and was somewhat forgotten about until he was resurfaced by an author, Marguerite Henry, in the ‘50s.
And she wrote a fictionalized retelling of his life where Brighty was forever associated with the, the wild scenery of the Grand Canyon and really shaped a lot of perception that went into whether burros should be allowed in the Canyon because everyone pictured Brighty standing on the cliff overlooking his, his domain.
BRODIE: So what does the future look like for this animal in, in and around northern Arizona?
HARLOW: Well, as long as the Wild Horse and Burro Act continues, they will forever be allowed to some extent on some public land. Now, that's always heavily debated on whether they should be allowed at all, whether they as a non-native animal should be removed. But as long as the act remains, they are allowed on the land now. The BLM does manage their populations and tries to keep them from overpopulating or overgrazing areas. So I don't think that we'll see a burro-less Arizona anytime soon.
