Brighty, donkeys and conservation in the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is a vast place. It is almost incomprehensible in size. And yet it can also seem strangely crowded. Millions of tourists flock to the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona every year. In 1999, almost 5 million people visited, the highest figure in Canyon history. And each one of them expected to see a wild, free and untrammelled landscape. Despite the obvious natural resources, this expectation has proved anything but easy to satisfy. The US National Park Service (NPS), responsible for the management of most large North American parks (along with several historic sites and museums), has struggled to make or keep the canyon ‘grand’. Park rangers have grappled with a multitude of issues during the past century, including automobile congestion, drying of the Colorado River and uranium mining inside the park. Conservation has posed a unique set of challenges. On a fundamental level, ‘restoring’ the Grand Canyon to its ‘original’ wilderness setting has proved intensely problematic. In the field of wildlife management, restoring the Canyon to its pre-Columbian splendour has entailed some tough decisions – none more so than a 1976 plan to eliminate a sizeable population of feral burros (wild donkeys) roaming the preserve, animals classified as exotics by the NPS.