There are too many wild burros living in the Lake Pleasant area northwest of Phoenix.
That’s according to the Bureau of Land Management’s Chris Wonderly.
Wonderly says there are more than 2,000 burros in the area — when there should be no more than a couple hundred.
So the agency has come up with a plan to reduce the herd.
“We set up a corral basically that has water or food in it that would attract the burros to those areas and then close the corral behind them and then transport those burros to be placed in the private care,” he said.
Wonderly said the corralled burros will be checked out by a vet, then put up for adoption or sale. The BLM also plans to use fertility control measures on some of the females to slow reproduction.
Starting Wednesday, the agency plans to capture over 1,500 wild burros in the Lake Pleasant Herd Management Area, which covers 103,000 acres.
Officials aim to get the population down to between 140 and 250.
The captured animals will be relocated to a wild horse and burro holding facility in Florence, where they will be prepared for sale and adoption.
BLM contractors will deploy corrals stocked with water and forage to trap the animals.
The effort is part of a national goal to relocate over 14,000 wild burros and horses in Western states to protect public lands and mitigate problems caused by overpopulation.
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