Wild Horses Of Alberta Society » 2009

Archive for April, 2009

Three More Wild Horses Found Shot

Posted by Doreen on April 29th, 2009

We received a report last night from Doug Doschewnyk that three horses were discovered shot West of Sundre on Coal Camp Road just North of the Rangers Station. The victims were, a mare heavy in foal, a yearling colt and a 2 to 4 year old stallion. They all had bullet holes in them. The stallion was still alive and flopping around, according to the first person on the scene. The fellow left to get a gun to put it out of its misery, but when he returned the stallion was dead as well. The mare had her birthing sack hanging out of her and on closer inspection you could see the tiny hooves sticking out. The yearling colt had taken a bullet to the chest and had ran uphill about 100 yards before collapsing. Bob and I arrived at the scene at about 9:00 pm and it was getting dark. I walked to each dead animal and studied it and wept at their senseless, violent deaths. Each horse still somewhat warm to the touch, I gently touched their faces and said a prayer for them. I could hear Bob cursing in the background at the spineless, heartless coward that did this, and he promised the little one he would find his killer.

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Lucky #14

Posted by Doreen on April 27th, 2009

Of our 13 horses that were spared certain death, one has foaled, making it our 14th lucky wild horse. Judy Becker wrote to us and included a few pictures. The email goes as follows;

To all my family and friend’s who have supported and trusted my decisions.

Ramsey’s baby 24 hrs old. How blessed I am to have experienced the first hours of this little creature’s life. She’s healthy, mom’s healthy – older sister’s a little rejected, but this opens up an opportunity to begin training. Even though this little filly isn’t wild and free as her species should be she will not be chased and hunted down by cruel humans as her mother and sister have been. We will love and cherish her and her family to the best of our ability for the rest of her life. Thank you God!

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URGENT Wild Horses Need our IMMEDIATE HELP

Posted by Doreen on April 26th, 2009

I had sent the following email on April 21st to several of our members and had a terrific response from them, hats off to our volunteers. The letter is as follows;

URGENT Wild Horses Need our IMMEDIATE HELP

There is a beautiful large herd of wild horses on a lease holders property and he needs the horses driven off of there. Bob saw them today and attached are a few pictures.

We need about 15 people on foot carrying flags or something to scare them out the open gate this Saturday. Anyways, any chance you could help? We need to walk through the trees to flush them out. If we are unsuccessful this guy is going to get someone to put up a capture pen and catch them up, and they will ALL end up in the slaughterhouse. Bring a buddy or 10. Thanks and please let me know ASAP. Doreen.

Saturday arrived and we had four people on horse back and another nine on foot. The wildies were spotted, so as a team we drove them forward. They started to double back but were headed off by several of us that were strategically placed both on the outskirts of the trees and within the grove of trees. I was inside the trees waving my stick with a plastic bag flapping on the end of it. It made me feel rather vulnerable, as the bears were just coming out of hybernation and that I could become a food source. However, I just kept going, stopping now and again to look nerously behind me.

Meanwhile, the stallion put on quite the show in the open meadow. He faced the people on horse back and ran towards them and then pranced about back and forth snorting, trying to get them to leave. However, with that many people,both on horse back and on foot the wild herd then retreated to a place where they knew the fence was down and took off, back into the forestry reserve. All this happened during almost white out snow conditions. We had a celebratory cup of coffee and all went their separate ways. Bob and I however, stayed behind to fix the gate and close it. We had just finished it when Bob looked up to see the wild herd only about 50 feet away. They had doubled back to where they knew the gate was down. However, when they saw the gate closed and us standing there they took off again. I initially ran alongside the fence line to get the downed section so they wouldn’t just come back in. Bob yelled to me me to make lots of noise as a deterent for them. Hah, I knew that my singing voice would scare anything off so I sang my little heart out singing “Du Wap Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do.” I bet even the wolves quaked in fear of that aweful noise. Simon Cowell be damned, this was my time to sing.

The herd came back one last time and faced me. The stallion snorted and so I snorted back and much to my amazement they galloped away. All I could hear was the sound of them crashing through the trees and splashing across the creek and onto the road.

Bob had to go back to get the fifty pound roll of barbed wire and some posts and tools, while I stood guard over the downed fence. Once again, we were working in blizzard like conditions trying to get the fence back up. I was a bit nervous of the weather that we might have trouble getting back to our vehicle and out of there. However, we did make it out of there safe and sound. Maybe not of sound mind, but safe nonetheless.

Thanks again to the following volunteers;

Left to right, Jo Ann Foote, Joanne Miller, Rosemary Homister, Tom Woolings, Michelle Tennant, Margaret Mackay, Jack Nichol, Glen Coulter, Judy Becker, Keltie & 7 month old Wylder Grass.

Little Wylder was our good luck charm.

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Thank You to Silent Auction Contributors

Posted by Doreen on April 10th, 2009

Thanks to the following Merchants for making our Silent Auction on March 21st a great success;

Sundre Pharmasave
M. T. Moriarity & Associates
Sundre Sobeys
Wilds Home Hardware
Gap Creek Wood Products
Sundre Livestock & Farm Supply Ltd.
Sundre Motors Ltd.
Sundre Photo / Smarts Trophies
Phil Michaud (Gaspard )
Alberta Forest & Garden ( Calg. )
Outpost Kids Clothing, Western Wear, Tack & Trailers
Sundre Flower Shoppe
V & S Options
RPM Automotive Sundre
Pioneer Veterinary Clinic
Suds & Stuff Laundromat & Tanning Salon
Tranquility Day Spa
Little Country Cappuccino
Honey Bee’s Ladies Wear
Four Way Dollar Store
Coldwell Banker Trails West Realty
Bergen Road Liquor Store
Forget Me Not Flowers
Sundre Men’s Wear
Carol Srvcek, Alberta Mustang Studio, art work
Steve Wordell, Painting
Ruth Moore, Painting
Larry Forsyth, Second Chance Saddlery
Maxine Walroth, Horse Hair Pottery and Ceramics
Keay Photography, Vancouver
Dawna Warren, for collecting the silent auction items on our behalf

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Dr. Claudia Notzke, Wild Horse Research and Commentary

Posted by Doreen on April 2nd, 2009

I apologize for the delay, but my home computer “died” and I have been busy whenever I was on campus. It is really too bad that I couldn’t be there for the award, but weather conditions on Sunday promised to be such that I really did not want to be on the road driving back to Lethbridge.

I was very happy to see IFAW -an organization that I have supported for a long time- recognize Bob and Doreen’s work on behalf of Alberta’s wild horses; it is as inspiring as it is outstanding. I am equally happy about what it says about IFAW’s recognition of the importance of the cause of Canada’s wild horses.

My own involvement with horses, wild and tame, goes back as long as I can remember. I am an avid equestrienne, horse owner and outdoors enthusiast as well as a geographer and professor at the University of Lethbridge, where I research and teach in the areas of environmental management and sustainable tourism. In Europe I watched wild horses being employed as “ecosystem engineers” to boost biodiversity in forest ecosystems. In Mongolia I worked as an ecovolunteer on a Przewalski Horse reintroduction project in Hustai National Park. In 2006 I embarked on a new research program, The Wild Horse in North America: Wildlife, Cultural Heritage or Ecological Intruder? Management Challenges and Prospects in Canada and the United States. This research program gives me the opportunity to apply my skills and expertise to a lifelong passion, and not surprisingly, it has since taken on a life of its own.

From the beginning a practical goal of my research was to contribute to a management environment which is characterized by an open-minded approach to the management of wild horses, which is based on facts and observations rather than pre-conceived ideas, prejudice, and political and economic expediency. After studying copious amounts of literature from the most diverse fields, talking to many different stakeholders and observing wild horses throughout western Canada and the western United States, this has come to mean a management approach to wild horses, which recognizes their legitimate status in our natural and cultural landscape. Such approach would also treat them as a natural, genetic and cultural resource with potential environmental, social and economic benefits.

Unfortunately, to date, this has happened nowhere in North America. In the United States lip service has been paid for decades to managing mustangs as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the west” under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. In reality tens of thousands of horses have been slaughtered or stockpiled in long term holding facilities, while fewer and fewer mustang herds are allowed to maintain a population size necessary for sustaining genetic diversity, and atrocities are committed against wild horses that are difficult to fathom.

The latter two statements also apply to western Canada, where we do not even pretend to acknowledge the wild horse as integral part of our own western frontier history. Wild horses have no status other than as “stray animals” in Alberta, and in British Columbia they are unofficially managed as an undesirable species. While exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, our wild horses only number in the hundreds, occurring in Alberta’s Foothills, British Columbia’s Chilcotin region, and Saskatchewan’s Bronson Forest.

Many scientists (paleoecologists, mammologists, range scientists) view the wild horse in North America as returned wildlife. The horse coevolved with American ecosystems over 4 million years, before becoming extinct 11,000 years ago, due to a combination of human overhunting and climate change. It was reintroduced by the Spanish ca 500 years ago and spread throughout the Americas, in many cases reoccupying its ancient ecological niche. Despite “domestication” the modern horse Equus caballus is genetically equivalent to Equus lambei, a horse, according to fossil records, that represented the most recent Equus species in North America prior to extinction.

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I fully agree with those who claim that using the 16th century as a baseline of what “natural” North American ecosystems should look like is totally arbitrary. Paleoecologist Paul Martin’s term “Columbian curtain” fittingly describes this blind spot. In my view there is also overwhelming scientific evidence to the effect that horses did not disappear from this continent where they evolved over millions of years without the “help” of newly immigrated and very efficient stone age hunters. It is difficult if not impossible for most people to think in terms of “geological time”, but this ought to be “nature’s calendar” and the time frame in which to explore the legitimacy of the horse’s ecological status in our environment. This is not Australia or New Zealand, where the horse is indeed an “alien introduced species”, its well-deserved cultural and historical status notwithstanding, nor is it a “goats on the Galapagos” scenario!

These observations should justify revisiting resource managers’ approach to the wild horse question. Currently no “management” is being implemented in Alberta, but capture (with no limits on numbers) is being facilitated with no concern for the impact on wild herds or the fate of the captured individuals. In 2004 the Wild Horses of Alberta Society prepared a well thought-out review of the Horse Capture Regulations, which deserves more attention than it has been getting, and which I would support. It proposes protection as well as management (where and when necessary) of wild horses on all public lands rather than just designated capture areas and placing wild horses under the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife Division rather than the Public Lands and Forest Division of Sustainable Resource Development. It also puts great emphasis on the enforcement of regulations and stronger measures against individuals who illegally graze and release domestic horses on public lands. I would advise caution in following the United States 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act without a thorough study of its many loopholes, pitfalls and implementation problems. Furthermore, our management requirements would be much less onerous, since wild horse numbers are smaller and more importantly, already subjected to the influence of a full range of large predators.

What is needed most of all is a change in attitude towards our free-roaming horses. Resource managers, conservationists and others who oppose the horse’s presence in the wild should try to open their mind to the possibility that the wild horse is not just a foreign domestic interloper or recent barnyard escapee, notwithstanding the fact that occasional escape artists continue to join wild herds. While herds in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia differ in their natural and cultural history, there is every indication that these animals are of varied origin, some in all likelihood descending from Spanish bloodlines, others of more recent domestic origin. What they share is natural smarts and genetic diversity acquired through generations of natural selection, features no longer present in many of our domestic breeds. Management decisions for wild horses should be made based on actual observations and research findings and verifyable data, not assumptions and prejudice. Research on the ecology and ethology of wild horses is urgently needed and constitutes a great opportunity for up and coming biologists!

We owe it to the horse’s unique role in our own history and culture to acknowledge it as a biological being in its own right, not just as a servant of Man.

I hope this is helpful!

Cheers

Claudia Notzke.

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Prestigious Awards From IFAW & County of Mountain View

Posted by Doreen on April 2nd, 2009

On March 21, 2009 Bob and I were presented with the 2008 Wild Life Protection Award from Oliever Bonnett, the Canadian Director of IFAW Canada. We were very humbled and honored to receive the award. It seemed a bit surreal to be recognized along with previous awards recipients given to icons such as Jane Goodal the Primatologist, Farley Mowat, Canadian Writer and Naturalist, and Bob Mills, Member of Parliment, Red Deer. All are well known conservationists. Bob and I didn’t feel that we were doing anything extraordinary. However, Oliever said to the packed crowd at the Evergreen Centre, that it takes very, very, rare individuals to have the gift to inspire others to care for and protect animals and for IFAW, Bob and Doreen are such an inspiration. He had went to say that IFAW’s selection panel really zeroed in on us because of the uniqueness and the challenges that we face in trying to protect the horses and our determinination to continue this. It was quite overwhelming to feel such confirmation from friends, family and supporters. Along with the IFAW award we were also recognized by Mountain View County reeve Al Kenmore who presented us with an award as well. Mayor Judy Dahl of Olds was also in attendance. The presentations were followed by a 20 minute slide show featuring our photographs of the wild horses of Alberta in the scenic foothills where they reside.The crowd of about 100 people then mingled about for some refreshments and purchased some silent auction items generously donated by Sundre merchants and a few talented artists as well. It was very touching to be recognized on an international level as well as locally and to have such a crowd supporting us. Thank you IFAW, County of Mountain View and all those who came to the awards ceremony.