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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign is speaking out against a planned federal round-up of wild burros in eastern Utah as part of an in-depth study of the animals.
The group said Thursday that the herd near Green River is one of the few that's been relatively undisturbed for more than two decades, and removing animals could permanently skew wild burro research by interrupting the animals' natural patterns and creating inflated birth rates.
The Bureau of Land Management says it's going ahead with the plan to round up about 130 of the 220 wild donkeys in the Sinbad herd. They say the herd has grown too large for the drought-parched land, and removing some will allow scientists to better study the rest.
The herd lives on a nearly 100,000-acre range about 200 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
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