Banette, a friendly donkey looking for her forever home, would make an ideal hiking companion in the high country because she can carry 80 to 125 pounds of gear.
Once a wild burro roaming Bureau of Land Management land in Southwest Arizona, Banette has since been trained at Mustang Camp, a nonprofit outside Blanco, New Mexico.
Mustang Camp is a licensed horse rescue that trains wild donkeys and mustangs for adoption.
On Saturday, Banette was one of six burros up for adoption at the La Plata County Fairgrounds.
“We’ve had them since February,” said Bill Idzerda, who trains horses for Mustang Camp. “When they first got to the rescue, you couldn’t touch them.”
Each donkey can be adopted for $125, Idzerda said. All of them are named after Pokémon characters, such as Eevee and Pikachu, and are between 3 and 4 years old.
“We had one named Bellsprout, but I couldn’t remember that, so she was always Brussels sprout,” Idzerda said.
Prospectors first imported burros to Arizona as pack animals in the 1860s, but later abandoned them after the mines failed. Having evolved in the deserts of North Africa, the burros thrived in the arid Southwest.
Today, Arizona has a wild burro problem because of their booming population, and it’s causing burro-vehicle collisions on highways.
The Washington Post reported in 2016 that about 4,800 wild burros roam Arizona. In total, about 10,800 wild burros live in BLM-supervised “herd management areas” and another 1,180 live in government-sponsored corrals.
BLM manages and protects mustangs and burros on 26.9 million acres of public lands across 10 western states through its Wild Horse and Burro Program.
Each year, BLM captures thousands of wild horses and burros to protect rangeland health. Roundups start with helicopters, which swoop down and chase mustangs and burros into awaiting corrals. The animals are then transferred to holding facilities before being adopted.
Banette was delivered to Mustang camp from Florence, Arizona, and was at first too scared to be touched.
Idzerda said the handlers started by feeding her out of a bucket.
“They need to realize that we are not the enemy,” he said. “Humans and donkeys need to have that connection.”
Eight weeks later, Banette can be pet and have her hooves cleaned.
Donkeys also make good guard animals because they are territorial and will alert a herd to predators, Idzerda said.
“If you were backpacking, these donkeys would be so sweet,” he said. “They don’t walk faster than you do. Horses have a tendency to want go ahead, but these will not run you over.”
mrupani@durangoherald.com
