Congressional Committee Will Call for Moratorium on Gathers

Posted Oct 28, 2009 by lauraallen

 

 

© by Laura Allen, Executive Director, Animal Law Coalition

Update Nov. 2, 2009: A Congressional staff member has confirmed to Animal Law Coalition that the House Natural Resources Committee is calling on BLM to stop all gathers or removals of wild horses and burros until Congress takes action on the controversial issues surrounding the wild horses and burros. 
A Congressional staff member told Animal Law Coalition, "It is my understanding that BLM has 11 more roundups planned for 2009 and is expecting to remove more than 6,000 horses.  This is unacceptable especially in light of the fact that these roundups are not based on science." 

Support the House Natural Resources Committee's call for a moratorium! Write or call your U.S. representative and senators and urge them to support a moratorium pending decisions by Congress on the role of the BLM and the course of the wild horses and burros program.  Copy the Committee on any fax or letter to your representative and senators so they can see your support for a moratorium! 

For more information, read Animal Law Coalition's call for a Congressional investigation and moratorium on gathers!

Original report: It's time for a public Congressional hearing and investigation of BLM's management of America's wild horses and burros including the new plan recently announced by DOI and BLM. 

In the meantime and pending decisions about the course of the wild horse and burro program, there should be a moratorium on gathers. 

On October 7, 2009 Dept. of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey announced a new 3 part plan for managing America's wild horses and burros in the future. But, other than a press release and a letter to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the specifics of the plan have not been made public. As Mr. Abbey said in the press conference held on Oct. 7, 2009, there are "thousands" of wild horse and burro enthusiasts who care about the fate of these animals. There are also innumerable experts and citizens concerned about BLM's management of these American icons.

There should be a public hearing and investigation held by Congress regarding BLM's management of America's wild horses and burros particularly before yet another plan essentially approved only by BLM and DOI is put in place. There should be a moratorium on all gathers until Congress has completed public hearings and an investigation and reached a decision about the appropriate management of these animals consistent with the laws that protect them. These are after all America's wild horses and burros.

The Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act (WFRHBA) directs BLM to manage America's wild horses and burros to "maintain free roaming behavior".  All management activities by law are to be at the "minimal feasible level". Under WFRHBA America's wild horses and burros are entitled to humane treatment and to remain free from "capture, ...harassment, or death".

But, instead, the BLM largely manages these animals by running them down with helicopters and gathering or removing them from public lands to holding facilities, separating families, injuring and even killing horses in the process. A terrifying ordeal that leaves wild horses and burros in holding pens where few are adopted, many are sold for slaughter and still more languish, their spirits and bodies broken. The operation of holding facilities will consume about 70% of the total 2009 budget for these animals.  

Surely, that is contrary, to say the least, to the directive of the WFRHBA. Indeed, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer found in her August 5, 2009 opinion: "It would be anomalous to infer that by authorizing the custodian of the wild-free roaming horses and burros to manage them, Congress intended to permit the animals' custodian to subvert the primary policy of the statute by capturing and removing from the wild the very animals that congress sought to protect from being removed from the wild." Colorado Wild Horse and Burro Coalition, Inc. v. Salazar, No. 06-1609 (D.D.C 2009)

Mr. Salazar insists that "arid western lands and watersheds" can't support the few wild horses that remain "without significant damage to the environment" and "degrading public lands".  These are reasons typically stated by BLM in its environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to support removals of wild horses and burros from herd areas. And, just as typically, there are no specifics to support these claims.

For more examples....

Indeed, Mr. Salazar and BLM do not mention the thousands of cattle grazing and drinking and fouling water on these lands, BLM's land sales, development, increasing recreational use, and mining as well diversion of water from herd areas. Wildlife ecologists say if public lands are "degraded", something that is disputed, these factors are far more to blame. In fact, citizens living in the areas where there are wild horses and burros, including small ranchers, contradict BLM's assessments the range is "degraded" or lacks sufficient water for these few remaining animals. 
Note that in 1990 BLM claimed the range was the best it had been in the last century. Yet, since then, there has been an increase in the numbers of wild horses and burros removed from the range. There is also no question BLM has routinely renewed grazing permits, finding the range satisfactory for grazing cattle and at the same time, issue environmental assessments that claim the very same range cannot support the few wild horses and burros that remain. BLM has also relied on outdated or what can only be called completely false assessments in its apparent zeal to justify removal of wild horses and burros. 

Shouldn't Congress at least have a hearing or investigate whether BLM's claims are true? Shouldn't Congress consider whether BLM should even continue as the manager of the wild horses and burros program? An agency that has turned the WFRHBA on its head and instead of managing to maintain free roaming behavior, does so by removing and penning wild horses and burros. 


It is also questionable whether BLM really has the authority, as it claims, to manage America's wild horses and burros in all respects pursuant to a multiple use concept. Though WFRHBA mentions "multiple-use relationship" in connection with specified ranges, it is very clear that the directive is to manage these animals otherwise only to "maintain a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands" and "protect the natural ecological balance of all wildlife species which inhabit such lands, particularly endangered wildlife species".

In effect, WFRHBA authorizes only limited interference with wild horses and burros in herd areas where they were living in 1971. Nothing about removing wild horses and burros from herd areas where they lived in 1971 to allow multiple use such as cattle grazing, recreation for off road vehicles, mining or development. Also, protecting the ecological balance of all wildlife has never meant rounding up and removing whole species. Especially when there is a law that explicitly protects their right to exist in historic herd areas.
Even designated ranges managed under a multiple use concept are to be "devoted principally" to wild horses and burros. The wild horses and burros on these lands are not to be eliminated for cattle or mining or recreation or even secondary to these other uses.  

Despite the limited authority to interfere with wild horses and burros under WFRHBA, the BLM has decided, however, the multiple public use concept applies to all herd areas as well as ranges. BLM even issued a regulation that effectively rewrites WFRHBA to say the "objectives of these regulations are management of wild horses and burros as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands under the principle of multiple use". 43 CFR § 4700.0-2 Yet, the WFRHBA says only that wild horses and burros "are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands". 16 U.S.C. §1331.

The BLM has also authorized itself to divide herd areas into "herd management areas", something not authorized by WFRHBA. 43 CFR 4710.3-1. In this way, with no statutory authority at all, BLM has limited wild horses and burros' access to thousands of acres that were historically their herd areas. This is done without thought about the horses' seasonal migration patterns or available resources. The BLM then removes wild horses and burros from the artificially created "herd management areas" on the basis there is insufficient forage, water or habitat! BLM also targets them for removal if they cross the artificial boundaries into their original herd areas.

While BLM has authorized itself to create divide herd areas into Herd Management Areas, its own regulations provide that "management of wild horses and burros shall be undertaken with the objective of limiting the animals' distribution to herd areas, 43 C.F.R. § 4710.4."Herd area" is defined by regulation as "the geographic area identified as having been used by a herd as its habitat in 1971," 43 C.F.R. §4710.4.
Another example of BLM's erosion of the WFRHBA protections is the rewording of the WFRHBA mandate "[a]ll management activities shall be at the minimal feasible level". BLM's regulation says "[m]anagement shall be at the minimum level necessary to attain the objectives identified in approved land use plans and herd management area plans." 43 CFR 4710.4, 16 U.S.C. §1333. Two very different laws. So if a land use plan authorizes a land giveaway or increased recreation or mining, "management...at a minimum level" can mean round up and removal, according to the BLM.
The Federal Land Policy Management Act requires management of public lands under concepts of multiple use and sustained yield. 43 U.S.C. §§ 1701, et seq.  But the multiple use concept does not trump the WFRHBA protections for wild horses.  In fact, the statute makes clear that the protections under WFRHBA take precedence. FLPMA, 43 U.S.C. § 1732 (a) Yet, despite this, BLM has issued a regulation that provides "[w]ild horses and burros shall be considered comparably with other resource values in the formulation of land use plans." 43 C.F.R. §4700.0-6(b).

The BLM's land use plans make clear that contrary to WFRHBA, it does not decide to remove wild horses and burros only to maintain a "thriving natural ecological balance to the range, and protect the range from the deterioration associated with overpopulation". Nor are the protected wild horse ranges "devoted principally" to the use of wild horses and burros. Instead, the BLM clearly embraces the multiple use concept for all lands designated for wild horses and burros.  Indeed, the plan seems to be to eliminate or zero out the wild horses and burros in favor of increased development and recreational use, mining, and cattle.
Surely, BLM's fast and loose interpretation of the WFRHBA is more than sufficient for Congress to take a look, hold a public hearing and investigate before America's icon is lost forever.

It should be noted that BLM has also virtually ignored the directive in the WFRHBA to "maintain a current inventory of wild free-roaming horses and burros on given areas of the public lands". 16 U.S.C. §1333(b). According to WFRHBA, the inventory is critical in determining appropriate management levels or AML and whether there is indeed an overpopulation or excess horses and burros. Yet, BLM has gathered and removed thousands of horses without the important information necessary to determine if the removal is legal. It's time to take a look, an independent census and standardize AML determinations.

It is important for Congress to open up for public review the work of an agency that has operated largely in secret, offering the public generally pre-determined courses of action, making a joke out of the public comment process. It is also time BLM or whatever agency that is put in charge of the wild horses and burros took seriously the WFRHBA mandate requiring consultation not with special interests but also a range of independent experts recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, the states and those with  "scientific expertise and special knowledge of wild horse and burro protection...[and] wildlife management". 16 U.S.C. §1333(b).

Congress should hold public hearings and investigate Secretary Salazar's plan in particular. There are innumerable experts outside of the BLM who should have an opportunity to weigh in on how BLM continues to manage America's wild horses and burros.

Secretary Salazar delivered the following 3 part proposal to Sen. Reid: 1. BLM will work with non-profits and the "thousands" of wild horse enthusiasts to create sanctuaries and preserves in the Midwest or east. In fact, BLM appears to have already decided on sever preserves. It is not known who is involved in these transactions or how BLM decided on these preserves. Surely, the public is entitled to know how this happened. Mr. Salazar says tourism would be encouraged and could provide a source of revenue.  But the mandate of the WFRHBA is to avoid such zoo-like settings for these American icons. The idea, the law, in fact, is that these animals are to remain free to roam on the public lands where they were living in 1971 when the Act went into effect.

2.  Mr. Salazar will designate more ranges for wild horses. He cited the Pryor Mountain herd, recently rounded up and decimated, as an example of a range under BLM protection.

3.  This is one of the most troubling aspects of Mr. Salazar and Mr. Abbey's plan. They say BLM will work to restore the "sustainability" of herds and public lands. BLM will continue to round up and remove horses but step up "fertility control", monitor sex ratios, and introduce non-reproducing herds.  More like BLM will work toward the extinction of herds.  The obvious concern is how a herd that is non-reproducing or sterilized can remain self-sustaining, genetically viable, as mandated by law. There are serious questions here about BLM's determination of sex ratios. These proposals will have a very negative effect on herds and herd behavior. This plan euphemistically referred to as "restoring sustainability" during the press conference, is, in fact, the opposite, a plan to exterminate the wild horses and burros and in doing so, create great chaos and suffering in the herds. In effect, this plan raises real concerns about compliance with WFRHBA's mandate that BLM should manage these animals to maintain "free-roaming behavior" and a "thriving natural ecological balance" in herd areas.

There are also growing concerns about the effectiveness and use of the contraceptive, PZP, particularly in view of its effect on herd behavior and dangerous side effects such as out of season foals.

These plans likely stem from BLM's secret discussions that began in July, 2008 about ways to eliminate wild horses through unlimited slaughter, killing, manipulation of sex ratios, sterilization of mares, creation of gelding herds and the like. It is telling that here there is no promise in this plan to stop the slaughter of these wild animals or killing of healthy animals. There is no promise to stop the round ups, the decimation of herds, the brutal treatment of America's wild horses and burros in holding facilities.

During its discussions in the past year BLM considered ways to keep the public away from round ups and the killing of healthy horses and burros and planned to brand protests as "eco-terrorism".  This was all to be done in secret. If Congress does not hold a hearing, investigate this plan and this agency, BLM will have succeeded.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

The wild horses and burros can be saved. There has to be a better way to manage these animals other than by hiring criminals to run them down with helicopters and penning some for life and sending others to slaughter. The WFRHBA requires them to be protected in their herd areas where they were living in 1971. And that is what the BLM should do. 

Find and contact your U.S. senators here and urge them to hold a hearing or investigate BLM's management of America's wild horses and burros and tell the BLM to stop rounding up and killing or removing our wild horses and burros or selling them for slaughter and return them to the lands where they were living in 1971. 
Go here to write your U.S. representative and urge him or her to do the same! 
 

Update on Conquistador and Rescued Bands - The Cloud Foundation

Update on Conquistador & Rescued Bands

 And what you can do to help put a moratorium on current massive roundups

Dear Friends of the Wild Horses;

I had the honor of traveling to Montana to visit our families of older wild horses that had been removed from the Custer National Forest Lands. These older horses include 19 year-old Conquistador and 21-year-old Grumpy Grulla. 15 horses in all, comprising four family groups.

We were able to buy and adopt them so they could stay together in their family units. Through the efforts of Laura & Carl Pivonka and Mike Penfold a large ranch was found just north of the Pryors where the horses could stay. When I arrived on Thursday with my friends, Crow Elder and Historian, Howard Boggess, and former BLM Deputy Director, Mike Penfold, I found all the horses looking healthy, but still in corrals awaiting release out into their large pasture that The Cloud Foundation has leased.

On Friday, in preparation for their release, ranch manager, Baerbel Streutzle and I began flagging miles of perimeter fence with pink and orange marking tape so the horses could clearly see the boundaries of their new world. One fence had to be built to avoid a gate that Crow Tribal hunters frequently use but may or may not shut. After our “fencers” (as Baerbel calls them) completed that fence we put them to work adding an additional wire to the top of a fence that borders the ranch road.

The fun part began that evening. I filmed as Baerbel quietly opened the gate for Bo, Chalupa, little Star, Grumpy Grulla, Sierra, and Sand to exit their large paddock and enter the immense pasture that is now their home. I expected them to race away from us, but once in the open field, they were much more interested in grazing. After weeks of eating only hay you could just see their joy at diving into the lush grass at the ranch.

Saturday morning, Laura and Carl, Mike and  his wife, Dona, and Howard arrived and helped us release first Trigger, Mae West and Evita, then Shane, Mystery and Moshi, and then Wild Blue (aka Floyd), the four-year old bachelor who had been mistreated in the chutes and even hotshotted by Troy Cattoor, who is the son of the owners of the Catoor roundup company.

Bo, Trigger, and Shane greeted each other in typical band stallion fashion, standing nose to nose sniffing and snorting, then squealing, spinning and finally marching back to their mares. Wild Blue, however, drew more attention from Trigger and they really fought for a few minutes before Trigger got his message across. Stay away from my mares! Wild Blue had likely been challenging Trigger on the day of their capture as he was caught with the band the day of their roundup.

Last to be released was Conquistador and his mare, Cavelitta. The proud old stallion (looking not a day over ten) and his mare pranced side-by-side into the big pasture and Shane immediately raced up to Conquistador for a ritual greeting. Then Wild Blue galloped over, making a dash at Cavelitta. Very quickly Conquistador taught him a lesson about messing with the tall black mare.

Wild Blue looked so small as Conquistador bit him on the neck and put a leg over the young stallion’s back. Once Conquistador had made his point, all the bands moved apart and went back to peacefully grazing. 

After the big release, the hardest work began. Laura, Carl, Mike, Dona, Howard, myself and Baerbel, as well as her friend and neighbor, Andrea (aka Shorty), began attacking the burdock growing at the back of the pasture in the cottonwoods and aspen trees. We cut the burdock and stacked the tall plants in piles and began burning them. Burdock has burrs that cling to the horses manes and tails and we tried to get as much of it cut and burned as possible. We were told that the idea for Velcro came from the burrs on these plants that can grow to six feet. I can believe this because I spent a lot of time pulling burrs out of my shoelaces, socks, and wool hat.

On Sunday we traveled back to Billings and watched the premier of Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions together feeling really good about the rescue of these little bands and their safety on this isolated ranch.

Thanks for making this happen! Without your donations to the Freedom Fund, these horses would have been forever separated and confined. Some would likely have gone into government holding facilities or even worse.  We hope that we can count on your continuing support as we work to return them to their home in the Pryors or to 70,000 acre Garvin Basin in the adjoining Bighorn Mountains. The Crow Tribe of Indians has expressed a desire to have their ancestral ponies again roaming on tribal lands.

For now, these horses are together and safe. . . thanks to you! I was not able to make the long trip around to access the Pryors and see Cloud for myself, but others who have seen him and the other horses in the wild report that they are well. It was at a cost of over $150,000 that our government removed 57 horses this September in the Pryors, leaving Cloud and only 124 other horses roaming free in all of Montana.

 
 

The BLM is now in the process of removing over 12,000 more wild horses and burros from our public lands. According to independent analysis of BLM’s own 2008 numbers we don’t have more than 15,500 wild horses left on the range. Please join the Cloud Foundation in calling for an immediate moratorium on the roundups now underway. You can see a schedule of the roundups here.

Action alert steps here:

1.    Send your letters demanding an immediate moratorium on all roundups to President Obama. Call your Representatives and follow up with faxes, letters and calls to all.  The roundups must stop in order to allow time for independent analysis on the true numbers of horses remaining and investigations into the true reasons for removing 12,000 wild horses and burros this fiscal year.

2.    Sign the Save Our Wild Horses Resolution petition to stop the roundups & join the Cloud Foundation mailing list to stay informed (join us on Facebook & Twitter & check our Blog for frequent updates too).

3.    Please watch the investigative report from CBS's George Knapp: "Stampede to Oblivion" and share this online video with everyone.

4.    Last but not least, 

contact media—this story of mismanagement of our mustangs and burros, truly living history, needs to be explored & shared. Write letters to the editor and ask National outlets for better coverage- we are on the verge of losing wild horses and burros before most of America knows we still have them in the wild. Media contacts online.


 
*Correction! This photo was incorrectly credited in the last e-mail, photo of Cloud turning to face the helicopter is Living Images by Carol Walker*

Secretary Salazar Urged to Consider Strategy to Manage Free-Roaming Horses and Burros

WildEarth Guardians - Show Press Releases

Date: 10/8/2009 Press Release
Author: WildEarth Guardians
Contact: WildEarth Guardians (505) 988-9126
Email: msalvo@wildearthguardians.org
Additional Contact: Mark Salvo, WildEarth Guardians, (503) 757-4221

Secretary Salazar Urged to Consider Strategy to Manage Free-Roaming Horses and Burros

Grazing Permit Retirement Effective Tool for Resolving Grazing Conflicts

PHOENIX - Responding to the “significant damage” free-roaming horses and burros can cause to public lands and resources, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar outlined a proposal yesterday in Washington, DC, to improve management of free-roaming horses and burros in the West. However, a western conservation group has criticized the Secretary for failing to recommend voluntary grazing permit retirement, among other strategies, as an effective tool for reducing livestock grazing conflicts with free-roaming horses and burros and native wildlife on public lands.

Given that millions of domestic cattle, sheep, horses and goats are permitted to graze more than 260 million acres of public land in the West, WildEarth Guardians contends that the Interior Department cannot ignore the continued harmful impacts of domestic livestock grazing in its efforts to protect sensitive public lands. WildEarth Guardians recently issued a report, Western Wildlife Under Hoof, which documented the myriad effects of livestock grazing on native wildlife and ecosystems across the western United States.

“Public lands grazing is permitted all over the West, and it’s nearly impossible for displaced wildlife to escape the impacts of domestic livestock production,” said Mark Salvo, WildEarth Guardians’ grazing program specialist. “Any proposal to improve horse and burro management in the West should include removal of domestic livestock from public lands to make way for horses and burros and wildlife.”

Voluntary grazing permit retirement is an increasingly popular way to resolve grazing conflicts on public lands. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, enacted last April, allows ranchers to permanently retire their grazing permits on select public lands in Oregon and Idaho in exchange for compensation.

“Voluntary grazing permit retirement is an ecologically imperative, economically rational, and politically pragmatic way to address grazing conflicts on public lands,” said Salvo.

A recent survey of public land ranchers in Nevada—the state with the most free-roaming horses and burros—indicates that as many as half are interested in retiring their grazing permits for compensation.

The Western Wildlife Under Hoof report is available at http://www.wildearthguardians.org/Portals/0/support_docs/report-WWUH-4-09_lowres.pdf.

Cattle Grazing Regulations Include Doctored Environmental Analysis | Union of Concerned Scientists

This happened during the Bush Administration - but, why hasn't anything been done to correct the situation? Please, contact your Senators and Representatives and ask them.

Grazing Regulations Include Doctored Environmental Analysis

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials compromised the integrity of a BLM study by removing scientific concerns about the effects newly relaxed grazing regulations would have on public lands. Millions of acres of public land in the western U. S. are protected by BLM grazing rules, which regulate when, where, and for how long cattle may graze there.

Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times reported that prior to relaxing Clinton-era restrictions on cattle grazing in June 2004, the BLM edited out portions of an environmental analysis calling into question the environmental sustainability of the new regulations.1 Agency scientists had studied the effects of grazing on wildlife and water quality and expressed concerns.

Cart reported that the BLM eliminated the original draft's warning that the "the Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general." Instead, the final version of the environmental analysis endorsed the new regulations, which were supported by the cattle industry, stating that the new rules would prove "beneficial to animals."2

Erick Campbell and Bill Brookes are both recently retired scientists, each with more than 30 years experience at the BLM. Campbell, a biologist, authored the section of the BLM study on the impacts of the rule change on wildlife and endangered species, while Brookes, a hydrologist, evaluated the impact on water resources. Both characterized the edits as an attempt to suppress scientific information. Campbell termed the matter "a whitewash" and "a crime." "They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," he said. Brookes agreed, adding "Everything I wrote was totally rewritten and watered down."3

The BLM argued that the changes resulted from a standard editorial process and issued a statement saying the conclusions reached by Campbell and Brookes were "based on personal opinion and unsubstantiated assertions rather than sound environmental analysis."4 In an interview Campbell refuted those charges, saying "All the science they extracted from my narrative was peer-reviewed science. This was not gray literature...This was peer-reviewed science in major journals."5 The concerns of Campbell and Brookes were echoed by wildlife experts at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and by officials at the Environmental Protection Agency.6

1. Cart, Julie. "Land Study on Grazing Denounced." Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2005. latimes.com requires subscription, article available from advocacy website, accessed December 5, 2006.
2. Bureau of Land Management, "Grazing Administration--Exclusive of Alaska; Final Rule," Department of the Interior, July 12, 2006, accessed December 5, 2006.
3. Cart.
4. Bearden, Tom. "New Grazing Rules." NewsHour with JimLehrer, August 10, 2005. Transcript online, accessed December 5, 2006.
5. Mitchell, Michele and Breslauer, Brenda. NOW with David Brancaccio, July 22, 2005. Transcript online, accessed December 5, 2006.
6. Cart, Julie. "Federal Officials Echoed Grazing-Rule Warnings." Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2005. latimes.com requires subscription, available online from advocacy site, accessed December 5, 2006.


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• Ken Salazar's Wild Horse Plan Fuels Accusations That He's In The Pocket Of Ranchers (huffingtonpost.com)

Update On Cloud, Firestorm And Exhilaration From Pryor Wild

I sent an email to Matt at Pryor Wild a few days ago asking about Cloud, his four year old daughter, Firestorm and the others injured in that messy, mismanaged roundup. He kindly emailed me right back informing me that he'd seen Cloud and he appeared to be moving fine. What a relief! Then on Friday he emailed me that he'd updated the Pryor Wild Blog with this video of Cloud and Firestorm as they look now. As you can see, they look just great!

Also, on the last segment of the video, you can see Exhilaration, who has a puncture wound on the back of his right front leg. Matt thinks he'll be okay, but you really can see him limping in this segment. Will have updates on him ASAP.


I know many of us have been greatly saddened by the decimation of this herd as well as many others as the BLM continues on their mad pace to gather all the wild horses from their ranges. The massive gathers are not only continuing, but increasing in number and scope, with hundreds more horses already having been removed from their ranges.

Please continue your efforts to stop this madness while there are still some wild horses left to save. See the Cloud Foundation for the latest information on what's happening and what you can do. We did get their attention. We can't stop now!

For the horses.

Horses On The Range - "Wild" Or "Feral"?

~ Watch the full program here ~

America's "wild" horses are often scorned by many people - including the BLM and Ken Salazar - as domestic cast-offs, horses that either escaped or were turned out by their owners, "feral" domestic horses. As such, they do not get the protection accorded "wildlife," and they are accused of being "non-native" or even "exotic" species that damage the environment and compete with "native" species for natural resources. Is this accusation valid? According to the latest studies in molecular genetics the answer is NO:

Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife

By Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. and Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D.*

Are wild horses truly “wild,” as an indigenous species in North America, or are they “feral weeds” – barnyard escapees, far removed genetically from their prehistoric ancestors? The question at hand is, therefore, whether or not modern horses, Equus caballus, should be considered native wildlife.

The question is legitimate and the answer important. In North America, the wild horse is often labeled as a non‐native, or even exotic species, by most federal or state agencies dealing with wildlife management, such as the National Park Service, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. The legal mandate for many of these agencies is to protect native wildlife and prevent non‐native species from causing harmful effects on the general ecology of the land. Thus, management is often directed at total eradication, or at least minimal numbers. If the idea that wild horses were, indeed, native wildlife, a great many current management approaches might be compromised. Thus, the rationale for examining this proposition, that the horse is a native or non‐native species, is significant.

The genus Equus, which includes modern horses, zebras, and asses, is the only surviving genus in a once diverse family of horses that included 27 genera. The precise date of origin for the genus Equus is unknown, but evidence documents the dispersal of Equus from North America to Eurasia approximately 2‐3 million years ago and a possible origin at about 3.4‐3.9 million years ago. Following this original emigration, several extinctions occurred in North America, with additional migrations to Asia (presumably across the Bering Land Bridge), and return migrations back to North America, over time. The last North American extinction probably occurred between213,000 and 11,000 years ago (Fazio 1995). Had it not been for previous westward migration, over the land bridge, into northwestern Russia (Siberia) and Asia, the horse would have faced complete extinction. However, Equus survived and spread to all continents of the globe, except Australia and Antarctica.

In 1493, on Columbus’ second voyage to the Americas, Spanish horses, representing E. caballus, were brought back to North America, first in the Virgin Islands, and, in 1519, they were reintroduced on the continent, in modern‐day Mexico, from where they radiated throughout the American Great Plains, after escape from their owners (Fazio 1995).

Critics of the idea that the North American wild horse is a native animal, using only selected paleontological data, assert that the species, E. caballus (or the caballoid horse), which was introduced in 1519, was a different species from that which disappeared 13,000 to 11,000 years before. Herein lies the crux of the debate. However, neither paleontological opinion nor modern molecular genetics support the contention that the modern horse in North America is non‐native.

Equus, a monophyletic taxon, is first represented in the North America fossil record about four million years ago by E. simplicidens, and this species is directly ancestral to later Blancan species about three million years ago (Azaroli and Voorhies 1990). Azzaroli (1992) believed, again on the basis of fossil records, that E. simplicidens gave rise to the late Pliocene E. Idahoensis, and that species, in turn, gave rise to the first caballoid horses two millions years ago in North America. Some migrated to Asia about one million years ago, while others, such as E. niobrarensis, remained in North America.

In North America, the divergence of E. caballus into various ecomorphotypes [breeds] included E. caballus mexicanus, or the American Periglacial Horse (also known as E. caballus laurentius Hay, or midlandensis Quinn) (Hibbard 1955). Today we would recognize these latter two horses as breeds, but in the realm of wildlife, the term used is subspecies. By ecomorphotype, we refer to differing phenotypic or physical characteristics within the same species, caused by genetic isolation in discrete habitats. In North America, isolated lower molar teeth and a mandible from sites of the Irvingtonian age appear to be E. caballus, morphologically. Through most of the Pleistocene Epoch in North America, the commonest species of Equus were not caballines but other lineages (species) resembling zebras, hemiones, and possibly asses (McGrew 1944; Quinn, 1957).3

Initially rare in North America, caballoid horses were associated with stenoid horses (Perhaps ancestral forerunners but certainly distinct species), but between one million and 500,000 years ago, the caballoid horses replaced the stenoid horses because of climatic preferences and changes in ecological niches (Forstén 1988). By the late Pleistocene, the North American taxa that can definitely be assigned to E. caballus are E. caballus alaskae (Azzaroli 1995) and E. caballus mexicanus (Winans 1989 – using the name laurentius). Both subspecies were thought to have been derived from E. niobrarensis (Azzaroli 1995).

Thus, based on a great deal of paleontological data, the origin of E. caballus is thought to be about two million years ago, and it originated in North America. However, the determination of species divergence based on phenotype is at least modestly subjective and often fails to account for the differing ecomorphotypes within a species, described above. Purely taxonomic methodologies looked at physical form for classifying animals and plants, relying on visual observations of physical characteristics. While earlier taxonomists tried to deal with the subjectivity of choosing characters they felt would adequately describe, and thus group, genera and species, these observations were lacking in precision. Nevertheless, the more subjective paleontological data strongly suggests the origin of E. caballus somewhere between one and two million years ago.

Reclassifications are now taking place, based on the power and objectivity of molecular biology. If one considers primate evolution, for example, the molecular biologists have provided us with a completely different evolutionary pathway for humans, and they have described entirely different relationships with other primates. None of this would have been possible prior to the methodologies now available through mitochondrial‐DNA analysis.

A series of genetic analyses, carried out at the San Diego Zoo’s Center for Reproduction in Endangered Species, and based on chromosome differences (Benirschke et al. 1965) and mitochondrial genes (George and Ryder 1986) both indicate significant genetic divergence among several forms of wild E. caballus as early as 200,000‐300,000 years ago. These studies do not speak to the origins of E. caballus per se, but they do point to a great deal of genetic divergence among members of E. caballus by 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Thus, the origin had to be earlier, but, at the very least, well before the disappearance of the horse 10,000 years ago.4

The relatively new (30‐year‐old) field of molecular biology, using mitochondrial‐DNA analysis, has recently revealed that the modern or caballine horse, E. caballus, is genetically equivalent to E. lambei, a horse, according to fossil records, that represented the most recent Equus species in North America prior to extinction. Not only is E. caballus genetically equivalent to E. lambei, but no evidence exists for the origin of E. caballus anywhere except North America (Forstén 1992).

According to the work of researchers from Uppsala University of the Department of Evolutionary Biology (Forstén 1992), the date of origin, based on mutation rates for mitochondrial‐DNA, for E. caballus, is set at approximately 1.7 million years ago in North America. This, of course, is very close, geologically speaking, to the 1‐2 million‐year figure presented by the interpretation of the fossil record.

Carles Vilà, also of the Department of Evolutionary Biology at Uppsala University, has corroborated Forstén’s work. Vilà et al (2001) have shown that the origin of domestic horse lineages was extremely widespread, over time and geography, and supports the existence of the caballoid horse in North American before its disappearance, corroborating the work of Benirschke et al. (1965), George and Ryder (1995), and Hibbard (1955).

A study conducted at the Ancient Biomolecules Centre of Oxford University (Weinstock et al. 2005) also corroborates the conclusions of Forstén (1992). Despite a great deal of variability in the size of the Pleistocene equids from differing locations (mostly ecomorphotypes), the DNA evidence strongly suggests that all of the large and small caballine samples belonged to the same species. The author states, “The presence of a morphologically variable caballine species widely distributed both north and south of the North American ice sheets raises the tantalizing possibility that, in spite of many taxa named on morphological grounds, most or even all North American caballines were members of the same species.”

In another study, Kruger et al. (2005), using microsatellite data, confirms the work of Forstén (1992) but gives a wider range for the emergence of the caballoid horse, of 0.86 to 2.3 million years ago. At the latest, however, that still places the caballoid horse in North America 860,000 years ago.

Finally, the work of Hofreiter et al (2001), examining the genetics of the so‐called E. lambei from the permafrost of Alaska, found that the variation was5 within that of modern horses, which translates into E. lambei actually being E. caballus, genetically. The molecular biology evidence is incontrovertible and indisputable, but it is supported by the interpretation of the fossil record as well.

The fact that horses were domesticated before they were reintroduced matters little from a biological viewpoint. They are the same species that originated here, and whether or not they were domesticated is quite irrelevant. Domestication altered little biology, and we can see that in the phenomenon called “going wild,” where wild horses revert to ancient behavioral patterns. Feist and McCullough (1976) dubbed this “social conservation” in his paper on behavior patterns and communication in the Pryor Mountain wild horses. The reemergence of primitive behaviors, resembling those of the plains zebra, indicated to him the shallowness of domestication in horses.

The issue of feralization and the use of the word “feral” is a human construct that has little biological meaning except in transitory behavior, usually forced on the animal in some manner. Consider this parallel. E. Przewalskii (Mongolian wild horse) disappeared from Mongolia a hundred years ago. It has survived since then in zoos. That is not domestication in the classic sense, but it is captivity, with keepers providing food and veterinarians providing health care. Then they were released during the 1990s and now repopulate their native range in Mongolia. Are they a reintroduced native species or not? And what is the difference between them and E. caballus in North America, except for the time frame and degree of captivity?

The key element in describing an animal as a native species is (1) where it originated; and (2) whether or not it co‐evolved with its habitat. Clearly, E. caballus did both, here in North American. There might be arguments about “breeds,” but there are no scientific grounds for arguments about “species.”

The non‐native, feral, and exotic designations given by agencies are not merely reflections of their failure to understand modern science but also a reflection of their desire to preserve old ways of thinking to keep alive the conflict between a species (wild horses), with no economic value anymore (by law), and the economic value of commercial livestock.

Native status for wild horses would place these animals, under law, within a new category for management considerations. As a form of wildlife,6 embedded with wildness, ancient behavioral patterns, and the morphology and biology of a sensitive prey species, they may finally be released from the “livestock‐gone‐loose” appellation.

LITERATURE CITED
Azzaroli, A. 1990. The genus Equus in Europe. pp. 339‐356 in: European Neogene mammal chronology (E. H. Lindsay, V. Fahlbuech, and P. Mein, eds.). Plenum Press, New York.
Azzaroli, A. 1992. Ascent and decline of monodactyl equids: A case for prehistoric overkill. Annales Zoologica Fennici 28:151‐163.
Azzaroli, A. 1995. A synopsis of the Quaternary species of Equus in North America. Bollttino della Societa Paleontologica Italiana. 34:205‐221.
Azzaroli, A., and M.R. Voorhies. 1990. The genus Equus in North America: The Blancan species. Paleontologica Italiana 80:175‐198.
Benirschke K., N. Malouf, R.J. Low, and H. Heck. 1965. Chromosome compliment: Difference between Equus caballus and Equus przewalskii Polliakoff. Science 148:382‐383.
Fazio, P.M. 1995. ʺThe Fight to Save a Memory: Creation of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (1968) and Evolving Federal Wild Horse Protection through 1971,ʺ doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University, College Station, p. 21.
Forstén, A. 1988. Middle Pleistocene replacement of stenoid horses by caballoid horses ecological implications. Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 65:23‐33.
Forstén, A. 1992. Mitochondrial‐DNA timetable and the evolution of Equus: Comparison of molecular and paleontological evidence. Ann. Zool. Fennici 28: 301‐309.
George, M., Jr., and O.A. Ryder. 1986. Mitochondrial DNA evolution in the genus Equus. Mol. Biol. Evol. 3:535‐546.
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Hibbard C.W. 1955. Pleistocene vertebrates from the upper Becarra (Becarra Superior) Formation, Valley of Tequixquiac, Mexico, with notes on other Pleistocene forms. Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan, 12:47‐96.
Hofreiter, M., Serre, D. Poinar, H.N. Kuch, M., Pääbo, S. 2001. Ancient DNA. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2(5), 353‐359.
Kruger et al. 2005. Phylogenetic analysis and species allocation of individual equids using microsatellite data. J. Anim. Breed. Genet. 122 (Suppl. 1):78‐86.
McGrew, P.O. 1944. An early Pleistocene (Blancan) fauna from Nebraska. Field Museum of Natural History, Geology Series, 9:33‐66.
Quinn, J.H. 1957. Pleistocene Equidae of Texas. University of Texas, Bureau of Economic Geology, Report of Investigations 33:1‐51.
Vilà, C., J.A. Leonard, A. Götherström, S. Marklund, K. Sandberg, K. Lidén, R. K. Wayne, H. Ellegren. 2001. Widespread origins of domestic horse lineages. Science 291: 474‐477.
Weinstock J.E. Willerslev, A. Sher, W. Tong, S.Y.W. Ho, D. Rubnestein, J. Storer, J. Burns, L. Martin, C. Bravi, A. Prieto, D. Froese, E. Scott, L. Xulong, A. Cooper. Evolution, systematics, and the phylogeography of Pleistocene horses in the New World: a molecular perspective. PLOS Biology 3:1‐7.
Winans M.C. 1989. A quantitative study of North American fossil species of the genus Equus. pp. 262‐297, in: The Evolution of Perissodactyles (D.R. Prothero and R.M. Schoch, eds.). Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Please note: This document is the sole intellectual property of Drs. Jay F. Kirkpatrick and Patricia M. Fazio. As such, altering of content in any manner is strictly prohibited. However, this statement may be copied and distributed freely in hardcopy, electronic, or Website form (updated June 12, 2009).
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* Author Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Director, The Science and Conservation Center, Billings, Montana, holds a Ph.D. in reproductive physiology from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. Patricia M. Fazio is an environmental writer and editor residing in Cody, Wyoming, holding a B.S. in agriculture (animal husbandry/biology) from Cornell University, an M.S. in environmental history from the University of Wyoming, and a Ph.D. in environmental history from Texas A&M University, College Station.