{"id":4672,"date":"2012-01-19T11:00:56","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=4672"},"modified":"2013-11-15T20:33:37","modified_gmt":"2013-11-16T02:33:37","slug":"donkeys-march-on-capitol-to-protest-burro-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/19\/donkeys-march-on-capitol-to-protest-burro-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"Donkey-Powered Protesters March on Texas Capitol"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Jeff Heimsath for KUT News<\/p>

Marjorie Farabee was stopped from bringing her wagon to the steps of the capitol. But she did deliver around 100,000 signatures collected online to protest the burro killings.<\/p><\/div>\n

Words matter in life. And the case of the the wild donkeys of West Texas is no exception.<\/p>\n

If you call them “Wild Burros” you could be inclined to see them as scrappy survivors, emblems of the Old West. If you call them “Feral Donkeys,” well, then they sound like pests that need to be exterminated.<\/p>\n

In Texas, what we have here is a failure to communicate.<\/p>\n\n

If you were near the State Capitol Wednesday, you got a first-hand glimpse of the fight heating up between the two camps. Six donkeys (including “Miss Abby,” a Donkey with her own blog<\/a>), and about a dozen protesters were there to deliver a message to the Texas Governor: “Stop killing the wild burros of Texas.”<\/p>\n

For years, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department<\/a> (TPWD) has had a policy of killing the burros. The donkeys were first introduced by early Spanish colonists in the 1600s. Today, the state views them as a dangerous invasive species, responsible for habitat destruction and the fouling of West Texas water sources (TPWD even has a webpage <\/a>devoted to burro droppings found near water wells).<\/p>\n

The Donkeys Were Here First<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The riders, many of them from West Texas where burros are more common, see it differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe burros have been there longer than Texas Parks and Wildlife<\/a>,” says Rachel Waller Rondeaux from Alpine. She is a member of Red Horse Nation<\/a>, a group devoted to wild horse protection. “I mean I think [Parks and Wildlife] is invasive, personally,\u201d<\/p>\n

Waller Rondeaux and others argue that the burros have lived in relative harmony with the Texas<\/p>\n

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Photo by Jeff Heimsath for KUT News<\/p>

Gayle-Suzanne Barron brings a box of 100,000 signatures collected online to protest the killing of Burros to the offices of the governor and leutenant governor.<\/p><\/div>\n

landscape since colonial times. They say the killing of burros has increased since a state program got underway to re-introduce longhorn sheep to West Texas. The state, they argue, wants to make money off the sheep hunting licenses.<\/p>\n

“It’s all for the money,” says Waller Rondeaux.<\/p>\n

That’s a charge Parks and Wildlife denies. Kevin Good, special assistant to the director of state parks, says the feral and exotic animal removal program has been in place since the early 1990s. If anything’s changed since then, he said, it’s been the population of wild donkeys.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to the droughts and the down economy, people just can\u2019t afford to take care of their animals anymore and they\u2019ve turned them loose,” says Good.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve got an animal like a burro that\u2019s eating grass,” he says, “than obviously that\u2019s grass that\u2019s not available for an animal like a rabbit. And so if your rabbit population declines, that means less food for red tail hawks for instance.\u201d<\/p>\n

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