Comment on FR Doc # 2012-13421

The USFW is attempting to revise the scientific name in order to exclude the burro that resides on public land in the United States. This is a politically driven maneuver and not a scientific change and it is the job of trained research scientists to decide and not a governmental agency. Currently wild burros here in the US are legally the same species listed under the Endangered Species Act. They are still the same species just different sub-populations due to geographical distribution. As you will see below in the ITIS (Smithsonian scientists) report, Equus asinus is listed as “African wild ass, ass, burro, burro (feral). This includes burros on public land in the United States. Below is some information that will hopefully inspire you to make a comment against this political change: Diagnostic characteristics are those features that make one particular species unique from all other species. While an organism can have common names in many languages, it possesses only one scientific name, in Latin. This name is unique, only being used once in science to describe an organism. Their unique status is enforced by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature's rules for creating a single "valid name". The procedure includes publishing a Latin description of the organism. Although unique, a scientific name may change. As improved methods of research provide scientists with more information on a species' evolutionary relationships, their scientific name is sometimes changed to reflect this better understanding BUT CANNOT BE CHANGED BY THE POLITACAL WHIMS OF BLM, USFW or any other governmental agency. More recently, the assignment of names that accurately reflect biological relationships has been helped by the highly detailed spore images that result from scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and DNA analysis. Scientists carefully research and study the relationships between … and other forms of life in order to understand them and assign scientific names based on the