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.
I would LOVE to know more about the issue of the so-called “disappearance” of the horse from North America which a lot of the non-scientific types are claiming is because it coincided with the arrival of humans over the Bering Land bridge whereupon they were “hunted to extinction.” That is such a stretch, I cannot imagine how people could consider such an efficient-at-survival mammal to be the hapless victim of what had to be a scattered few human hunters – certainly not the level of population that, say, decimated bison herds in the late 1800’s. So – how do I learn more about this issue?
Left by Miss Jan on June 5th, 2009