Burros are amazingly hardy animals able to travel long distances, find nutrition in their sparse environments and lose a third of their body weight in water and replenish it in one drink!

But burros are not the same kind of athlete as wild horses are. They respond really badly to the kind of stress caused by a helicopter driving them from their homes at a roundup and captured, and death rates can rise to twice those of wild horses during capture and the first months in captivity.

Our investigations have shown time and again that burros suffer greatly as the federal agencies tasked with their care still do not include burro specific guidelines in determining reproductive rates and needs on range and the needs of burros during and after capture.

Our longears are often overlooked except for one month each year, Burro month in May. At WHE burros are a focus very day of the year.

WHE has active burro centric legal action in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Our investigative team continues to track burros into holding and is working hard to gain transparency.

We won our federal lawsuit last year setting the legal precedent that management planning has been illegally delayed and that removing wild horses is NOT management.  We are building on that win and have lawsuits for many other wild horse and burro areas across the West. 

This year we successfully won our lawsuit that forced a closed facility to open to allow public observation of burros. (You can see more in Courthouse news HERE)

The First Amendment has always been a focal point of our work. Initially opening daily access over a decade ago in a fight that took 6 years and trips up and down the court system eventually resulting in daily access (that had been previously denied program wide). More HERE.

But burros seemed to be left out of the Wild Horse and Burro program access agreement and welfare standards.

We must bring current legal action to a successful conclusion to protect our wild burros.