The tough ponies of the Pryor Mountains are celebrated in the lore of the Crow Tribe.

“The reason the Crow used them is they could run all day and go for a week without food,” said Elias Goes Ahead, a Crow historian who teaches at Pryor. “The Crow respect these ponies because they were tough.”

Goes Ahead, 49, has been sought out recently for his knowledge of the Pryor mustangs in the controversy over the Bureau of Land Management’s roundup of the herd of about 190 horses. Fifty-seven of those rounded up will be on the auction block today at the BLM’s Britton Springs corrals, just north of Lovell, Wyo. The auction begins at noon.

“I’m surprised there’s a lot of sympathy behind these mustangs,” Goes Ahead said.

The BLM’s roundup is part of a management plan designed to lessen impacts to the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, 38,000 acres set aside for the horses. Recent studies have shown the range’s ecosystem is being harmed by overgrazing. Most of the horses that took up residence off the range, on Custer National Forest land, will be auctioned, including a 21-year-old mare and a 19-year-old stallion.

The BLM has denied horse advocates’ requests to expand the range to include adjacent forest lands to allow more horses to live in the mountains, in part saying that there’s no evidence the horses ever occupied the lands. But according to Goes Ahead, the horses have been in the Pryor Mountains going back before Chief Plenty Coups’ time. He was born in 1848, and the stories were handed down to him, Goes Ahead said.

“Even before the white man was there, the ponies were there,” Goes Ahead said.

Hidatsa records date the arrival of horses in the Northern Plains to around 1728, Goes Ahead said. And it wasn’t long after that the Crow stole horses from the Hidatsa, he added.

“After that, there was a fusion of horses from all over, they began to multiply,” he said.

Goes Ahead recounts a story about a prized gray mustang kept in a Shoshone lodge while the Indians were camped at Bad Pass, near the base of the Pryor Mountains and Bighorn Canyon. A Crow warrior stole the horse and was chased by the horse’s angry owner. In a vision, the Crow warrior had learned that if he sang four songs, the horse would be able to fly. So he sang the songs and rode the mustang off the southern rim of Dryhead Canyon. To the pursuers’ amazement, the gray mustang and its rider sailed across the canyon and landed on the other side. Rock cairns now mark the spot where the horse jumped and landed.

Goes Ahead calls the story one of the tribe’s four most phenomenal and supernatural stories.

“There’s quite a history behind these mustangs,” Goes Ahead said. “These horses are a special breed.”

Most of the Crow Tribe’s horses were slaughtered by the federal government in the 1940s to make room for cattle, Goes Ahead said. That meant the loss of some Pryor mustang bloodlines.

“But they couldn’t take away the stories,” he said.

Link: Billings Gazette: Mustangs big part of Crow lore

In the tug of war between Pryor Mountain wild horse advocates and federal managers, Gus Cothran’s name gets tossed around frequently.

Cothran, a professor at Texas A&M University who specializes in horse genetics, said his views are sometimes distorted to suit the needs of special interests.

“I understand that people are looking for expertise,” he said. “But it would be nice to talk to people in person so things don’t get taken out of context.”

Here are Cothran’s thoughts on the Pryor Mountain wild horse roundup and the resulting reduction of the herd.

Genetics

How many animals does it take to keep a wild horse herd genetically viable?

“One-hundred and twenty breeding animals was kind of the agreed upon number several years ago,” Cothran said.

In the short term, the Pryor mustang herd won’t be hurt by a reduction from 188 animals to around 130, he said. The Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of the herd, had originally proposed removing about 70 animals. But the roundup ended Wednesday before the agency reached its target. In its new management plan, BLM is proposing a maximum herd of 120 animals, excluding the current year’s foals.

“There’s always a greater risk when you reduce the herd, but you have to balance that with the environmental issues,” Cothran said.

BLM has justified its reduction of the herd based on a study of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range that found the mountain and high desert area in ecological decline from overgrazing. The agency has proposed installation of water guzzlers to spread horses out on the mountain in hopes of easing the pressure on higher meadows, in addition to conducting prescribed burns to remove conifers.

The concern in keeping only 120 horses on the range, Cothran said, is the threat of a potential die-off that could reduce the herd even further, reducing the herd’s genetic diversity.

In the Pryor horses’ favor if such an event should occur, though, is that the horses that have been adopted out could be used to recharge the herd in such a dire situation.

Contraception

The BLM also has experimented with using the contraceptive PZP to reduce the growth of the herd.

Cothran said the contraceptive has been used successfully. But he said there’s a danger in applying the drug to a small population of animals because it can control which genetics are passed on.

On the plus side, Cothran said, delaying reproduction – or what he called extending the genetic interval – is good for a herd. The genetic interval is the time between when an individual animal reproduces and when its offspring breeds. The longer the interval, to a point, the better for slowing the rate of genetic change.

“The roundups aren’t real popular things, either,” he said. “In the long term, PZP may be less disruptive for the horses.”

Wild family tree

The Pryor Mountain wild mustangs have been shown to be descendants of old Spanish breeds, Cothran said. These are the horses first brought to the Americas by the Spanish.

These genes aren’t pure, however. The Pryor horses probably bred with ranch stock and horses from other wild horse ranges were introduced out of concern over inbreeding in the Pryor horses, he said.

“There are a number of different strains of the colonial Spanish horse, each of them are different genetically now because they were isolated from each other,” Cothran said.

He did say, however, that the breed brought over by the Conquistadors to Central America no longer exists.

Despite any direct ties to a specific breed, Cothran said the Pryor mustangs are special horses.

“There are not many herds out there now that have the old colonial Spanish-type horse,” he said.

Because the Pryor herd contains this unusual genetic component, Cothran said they are unique.

“I do agree that we need to try and preserve this herd.”

Changing times

Cothran recognizes that management of the Pryor horses can be controversial, with people on all sides of the issue concerned about the horses but with different ideas on how to best take care of them. The situation is further complicated by variables such as changes in the environment and within BLM’s management.

There is one point maybe all can agree on.

“They are one of the most significant, if not the most significant, wild horse herds in the United States,” Cothran said.

Link: Billings Gazette: Noted geneticist gives his two bits on significance of Pryor Mountain mustangs

Join Return to Freedom and emcee GaWaNi Pony Boy for a magical day of stunning performances, gourmet organic food, wine tasting by Wild Horse Winery and Sculpterra Winery, silent auction, vendors, activities for kids and much more!

All proceeds benefit Return to Freedom and will be used to care for over 200 wild horses and burros that reside at our sanctuary.

2009 Spirit of the Horse
Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009
1:00pm-6:00pm
Bella Vista Ranch
2800 Villa Real, Carpinteria

Tickets are on sale now to this unforgettable event!

You can also support Spirit of the Horse by donating an auction item, placing an ad in our program book, or becoming a sponsor.

Nearly 37,000 wild horses and burros roam BLM-managed lands across the West. To ensure that the number of animals does not exceed the land’s capacity to support them, the BLM removes several thousand horses and burros from Western rangelands each year and works to place as many animals as possible into private care through public adoptions that are held throughout the United States. Since 1971, more than 220,000 wild horses and burros have been adopted.

Horses between the ages of one and six years old are typically selected from the herds for adoption, but a horse of any age can fit into the right farm or ranch. For many mustang adopters, having the opportunity to work with a horse or burro with an intriguing past and an unconventional upbringing brings a special element to their relationship.

Organizations supporting National Wild Horse Adoption Day, besides the BLM, are Wild Horses 4 Ever, the American Horse Protection Association, the Mustang Heritage Foundation, and the Humane Society of the United States. The groups are working together to educate Americans about wild horse management issues while promoting the adoption of wild horses through adoption events, training programs, and motivational experiences.

“Wild horses and burros are living symbols of the Western spirit,” said BLM Acting Director Mike Pool. “I encourage anyone with an interest to consider adopting one of these noble animals, which are known for their intelligence, sure-footedness, strength, and endurance.”

The goal of adopting out 1,000 horses and burros through the National Adoption Day event will not only create opportunities for equine enthusiasts, but also will save money for taxpayers by moving animals from government holding facilities into private care.

More than 25 events have been scheduled nationwide so far! To find an event near you, visit http://www.nationalwildhorseadoptionday.org/event-calendar.html

For more information: call 817-559-5650 or visit http://nationalwildhorseadoptionday.org

Link: National Wild Horse Adoption Day: September 26 2009
Link: Mustang Heritage Foundation
Link: BLM: National Adoption Day
Link: Extreme Mustang Makeover

American Wild Horse PSA – Sheryl Crow & Viggo Mortensen from David Byers on Vimeo.

COROLLA — “Strong, powerful, determined to survive.” That’s how Wild Horse Fund Director Karen McCalpin describes the herd of wild horses that have roamed the beaches of northern Currituck County for centuries.

McCalpin delivered a talk earlier this week, “History of Hooves,” at the 100-year-old Corolla schoolhouse, now the home offices of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund. McCalpin’s presentation kicked off the Currituck Heritage Park’s Winter Education Series.

A crowd of about 25 listened intently as McCalpin discussed the origins of horses, starting as far back as 75 million years ago with a creature known as Eohippus, or the “dawn horse.”

As horses evolved, McCalpin said man realized he could domesticate the animals and put them to work, rather than hunt them for meat.

But how did a herd of wild horses end up grazing on the Outer Banks?

During 16th century Spanish explorations to the New World, massive ships would bring along horses. Noted explorers such as Pedro de Castañeda and Christopher Columbus, McCalpin said, both documented transporting livestock on their voyages, which included as many as 20 horses at a time.

Historical documents indicate six ships, transporting as many as 100 horses, explored an area in 1526 that is now the modern day Carolinas, McCalpin said. According to the documents, the horses were suspended from ropes, tied to poles on deck, even thrown overboard when the crew needed to lighten boat’s weight. About half the horses perished at sea.

The horses that survived were bred, and eventually led to a surplus of horses on the east coast of what later would become the United States — more than 100,000 in the 17th century, McCalpin said.

Today, the horses are becoming scarce, and McCalpin is out to assist their survival.

Currently the Corolla herd lives on the undeveloped terrain of the northern Corova beaches, protected and cherished by tourists and residents alike.

It isn’t uncommon for residents of the area, like Whalehead Club Director Edna Baden, to see the horses meandering through private property.

“Two things you need to know is that you don’t mess with Corova and you don’t mess with horses,” Baden said.

Corolla’s wild horses are a tremendous revenue generator for tourism in Currituck, but an airtight horse management plan signed in 1997 by the Wild Horse Fund and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, threatens the herd’s survival, McCalpin says.

The plan restricts the herd size to 60, a genetically unhealthy number, according to equine geneticist Gus Cothran of Texas A&M University, who released results of a DNA study he conducted earlier this year.

Cothran’s study determined that over time, the horses have become inbred, and they are currently at risk for developing a variety of illnesses. Cothran recommended increasing the herd from 120 horses to 150, saying it would allow for more genetic variability and a healthier herd.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not agreed to any changes in the 1997 agreement. The agency has agreed, however, to discuss a language change allowing several horses from Corolla to be exchanged for several from the Shackleford Banks herd. The Shackleford horses share the same genetic makeup and diet as the Corolla herd.

McCalpin hopes to use programs like History on Hooves to give the Corolla horses a voice.

“I feel more hopeful than ever that we will (eventually) have a genetically healthy herd,” she said. “The day will come when the (herd) can’t roam wild and free, but that day isn’t today.”

Corolla residents seem appreciative of the Wild Horse Fund’s efforts.

“I’ve lived here for two years and I have a real love for the horses, and I wanted to learn more about them,” said Carol Straley, who attended the program.

Article: Daily Advance: Advocates determined to keep horses roaming OBX

Madeleine Pickens, the wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who this week offered to rescue more than 30,000 wild horses kept in federal holding pens, said yesterday that she wants to create a permanent retirement ranch for the horses and burros that could be open to the public.

A key to her plan, she said, is federal tax credits to help attract donors. Pickens said she met last week with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to discuss the proposal, which animal rights advocates have long promoted as an incentive for encouraging private individuals to adopt wild horses.

“It’s going to save tax dollars in the end, quite a bit,” she said in an interview. “It has become so expensive to take care of these horses in these holding areas.”

Half of the nation’s wild horse population is in Nevada, and Pickens said Reid told her that he has been concerned about the issue for 25 years. Jon Summers, a spokesman for Reid, said the senator was intrigued by the proposal but did not commit to it.

“He thought this was a creative idea to a problem that needs creative solutions,” Summers said.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management revealed this week that Pickens had come to them with a plan to relieve a growing agency headache — the care of wild horses and burros that were removed from federal lands and placed in holding pens to await adoption. The government periodically gathers horses from the range to prevent overpopulation and damage to the grasslands. It typically rounds up about 10,000 horses in a year.

Horse adoptions have slowed significantly in the past five years, and the cost of feeding and caring for these horses has grown sharply, decimating the bureau’s budget and creating what the Government Accountability Office termed a “crisis.” The government is caring for about as many horses in holding facilities as the 33,000 that still roam wild on federal lands.

Bureau officials reluctantly began to consider exercising a legal but controversial option: euthanasia. Their focus was on about 2,000 unwanted horses that had not been adopted despite several tries.

Pickens, a racehorse breeder and lifelong animal lover, said she was horrified when she learned about the problem. “There’s got to be a way to bypass them — why does it have to be Washington to solve the problem?” said Pickens, who, along with her husband, airlifted 800 cats and dogs stranded by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and brought them to California for adoption.

She said that she approached officials at the Bureau of Land Management and that they embraced her idea. “I was just so thrilled — at all the areas I expected a ‘no’ from, I just got a smile and ‘Yes, we love it,’ ” she said.

Pickens is negotiating to win control of more than 1 million acres of grassland in the West, where she plans to establish a horse ranch. She intends to acquire part of the land through private sale and the rest through a lease with the federal government. She is considering several pieces of land, costing $10 million to $50 million.

Pickens wants to adopt all the wild horses and burros being held in federal pens, sterilize them and let them loose on her retirement ranch. As the government rounds up additional horses each year, she said, she could absorb them as well because they would replace horses on the ranch that die from natural causes.

“I see it as an eco-vacation spot,” Pickens said. “Could you imagine taking your kids there, staying on the range in log cabins or tepees? I love the idea of sharing it with the American people.”

Jeff Malcolm, an assistant director at the GAO who studied the wild horse program at the request of Congress, said that Pickens’s idea could work but that the government would still need to control the population of wild horses roaming the range. “You have to look at the entire pipeline of the process,” he said. “You need a strategy of population control.”

Bureau officials have been experimenting with fertility control but have not employed a comprehensive method to manage the population growth of the animals.

Article: Retirement Ranch Planned for Wild Horses
Other articles: Pickens’ wife steps up to shelter wild horses

National Forest Service rangers in New Mexico’s Jicarilla Wild Horse Territory (part of the Carson National Forest, near the Colorado border) are expecting some high-tech help to aid their efforts to capture and relocate the growing number of wild horses overpopulating the area and threatening to cut off the food supply. Sandia National Laboratories researchers Casey Giron and Josh Jacob are designing a sensor system that can better detect the location of wild horses so they can be more easily trapped and relocated.

Although Jicarilla has enough grass and foliage to feed as many as 105 horses, according to a 2004 National Forest Service assessment, more than 425 of the animals are crowded into the territory and have thinned out the food supply. The Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service routinely round up wild horses in overpopulated areas and offer them up for adoption to prevent them from starving. This fall they plan to relocate 93 horses from Carson National Forest.

Rustling up that many horses isn’t easy. Once the rangers find a group of horses, they have to build a corral and bait it with salt, minerals and hay—and hope the horses come. The horses often shy away from the corrals, because they sense people are nearby (in fact, the trappers watch the corral via surveillance camera from a trailer located 50 to 100 yards (45.7 to 91.4 meters) away and remotely close the gate after horses wander in). The use of heat or air-conditioning in the trailer is even more likely to drive off the animals, which makes for uncomfortable monitoring conditions inside the trailer in extreme weather.

Giron and Jacob are building a system that not only allows the trappers to monitor the corral and work the gate from as far away as five miles, but it  also alerts the trappers when horses approach the corral, negating the need for them to watch the video screens for hours or even days. The system includes shoebox-size waterproof plastic containers — each with a radio transmitter, electronics processor, and externally connected seismic sensors, which should be able to detect the stomping of an animal the size of a horse. When an animal approaches and the seismic sensors are activated, the camera turns on and sends an image via the radio transmitter to the trapper, who can then shut the gate from afar. The researchers are planning to add the capability for a thermo-imaging video camera as well as a photovoltaic solar panel that would charge the batteries, making the unit self-sufficient.

After capture the Jicarilla horses are brought to a ranch, where they’re branded, checked by a veterinarian and prepared for adoption. For further information about horse adoption, see the Carson National Forest site.

(Images courtesy of Sandia Corp., a Lockheed Martin company)

Article: High-tech approach to taming New Mexico’s wild horses

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