Eleven burros found dead near spring in Death Valley. Rangers may now know why
Rangers are investigating after they found 11 dead burros near a spring in a California national park.
The burros died near Owls Hole Spring, a stagnant spring in Death Valley National Park they believe the burros may have drank from after defecating near and in the water, National Park Service officials said in a Sept. 11 news release.
The park service believes the culprit is a harmful algae bloom in the water, officials said. Algae and cyanobacteria are naturally present in the water, and these organisms “are more likely to grow into a harmful algae bloom when water is slow-moving, warm, and contains high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, such as from fertilizer or sewage, according to the Centers for Disease Control.”
Conditions in the stagnant spring were ripe for an algae bloom during the park’s hottest summer on record this year, officials said.
Rangers installed a sign warning that humans and pets should not to drink or touch the water. They also should not touch or move the burro carcasses, officials said.
A photo shows two of the carcasses lined up near each other in the desert. It appears the carcasses may have been out there for at least a few days since the animals died.
Rangers have only found the dead burros so far but suspect other animals were also affected, officials said. Luckily they don’t have to worry about pupfish, the rarest fish in the world known for their presence in the park, because none live in Owls Hole Spring.
The deaths reignited the park service’s desire to remove burros from the park altogether. The roughly 4,000 burros in the park are descendants of animals that miners released decades ago and are not native, officials said.
“I hate to see any animal suffer,” park service Superintendent Mike Reynolds said in the release. “The National Park Service is working to remove feral burros from Death Valley, for their own safety and to reduce impacts to native wildlife.”
The park service hasn’t had enough funding to round up the burros on a large scale since 2005, officials said.
The Bureau of Land Management helped the park service remove 43 burros in recent years, and the nonprofit organization Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue has captured an additional 256 burros from the park since 2018, officials said.
In July, five burros were shot to death in the park, McClatchy News previously reported.
The park has enough funding to resume roundups in 2026, officials said.
