You don’t call the West Country’s wild horses an invasive species and hope to ride away unscathed.
Range inventory specialist Clare Tannas got a tough lesson in just how treasured the horses are when he recently suggested that continual grazing by the 300 or so wild horses west of Sundre posed a threat to prime grazing grasses and the animals should be removed, and perhaps replaced with bison.
“Feral horses are escaped domestic animals that are not native to the foothills range and should be treated as an invasive species,” wrote Tannas in an article published in the Mountain View Gazette last month. If the horses’ numbers are allowed to grow unchecked they could irrevocably damage the local ecology by over-grazing key rough fescue grasses, he suggests.
The reaction was quick — and sometimes even a little nasty.
His conclusions were based on prejudice, assumptions and pseudo-science, lashed University of Lethbridge wild horse researcher Claudia Notzke.
Wild Horses of Alberta Society president Bob Henderson blasted the “many and ill-informed ideas and attitudes currently prevailing around this province about our wild horses, not to mention blatant anti-wildlife propaganda from so-called eco-ag experts and concerned industry groups.”
Henderson says he wasn’t the only one chomping at the bit to respond. “When that article came up, I had people coming up to me and they were just pissed, they really were.” One man grabbed Henderson’s arm at a livestock auction and demanded to know if he was going to rebut the article.
Tannas admits he was a little taken aback by the response.
“I was surprised a little bit by the tone,” he said from his farm south of Cremona.
A horse owner himself, he understands the emotional connection.
But he says, as a University of Alberta-trained rangeland agrologist with 30 years of experience, he also knows the science. Tannas is also an owner in the family firm Eastern Slopes Rangeland Seeds Ltd. with wife Kathy and son Steven that undertakes rangeland environmental assessments and other consulting services.
As for why he chose to mosey into the wild horse debate, Tannas said he was merely trying to spark some discussion about wild horses, especially since there appears to be growing support for some sort of legislated protection.
That kind of protection has led to U.S. herds multiplying unchecked and in several states horses are starving, he says.
“Even when the horses are starving, (horse supporters) don’t want any controls put on it. It becomes such an emotional thing.
“Long before you have horses starving, there is extreme damage done to the rangeland,” he says.
He fears a situation called “polishing the range” could be repeated in the West Country.
“We may have already lost (rough fescue) in certain places where they have grazed continually. In fact, it may take years and years for it to come back.”
“The reality is it’s an introduced species. It’s a non-native species that I think we’re going to have a difficult time, down the road, controlling.”
Eventually, all grazing animals, including elk and deer, will be affected. But the damage can affect the whole ecology, having an impact on songbirds and even the soil. “There’s a cumulative effect.”
Tannas says people are turning their horses loose in the back country, further boosting populations. He’s seen a branded horse and others are suspiciously friendly.
If there have to be grazing animals out there, why not introduce bison, a truly indigenous species, he asks.
Henderson, a former Calgary police officer and one of the wild horses’ most devoted guardians, is not convinced by Tannas’s science. Only a few hundred horses roam the area, while thousands of cattle are moved in to feed by ranchers during summer months.
To him, Tannas’s article was just another thinly veiled attempt to make a case for getting rid of the horses.
“Again it was blaming the horses for what’s wrong. When it’s the horses (that) are a benefit to the range.”
Given the recent history of the wild horses, it is perhaps not surprising that their fans feel obligated to jump to their defence.
For years, the horses were preyed on by rifle-toting poachers who left their corpses to rot. Since 2002, about 30 horses were found dead, 20 in 2007 alone. There was finally a break in the case in January when two men and a teenage boy were charged with shooting a single wild horse. A fourth man was charged in February. The charges are still before the courts.
The provincial government considers the horses feral: the descendants of mining and logging work horses turned loose in the 1920s when their usefulness ended.
Each year, permits are issued to round up some of the horses to control the population. Since 1997, about 10 permits a year have been issued and 25 to 35 horses taken. Some are used for resale as pack animals or rodeo stock. Others end up at meat packing plants.
Henderson said the society has been willing to help out with a plan to maintain the herds. A 10-page draft plan was submitted to the government in 2005 but went nowhere.
“We’re working on a new proposal based on some better idea for managing the numbers if they have to be managed,” he says. “But right now with the way nature is and the predators and all this other stuff, the numbers are staying fairly constant.”
The society could play a role in finding homes on ranches for the captured horses, he says.
University of Lethbridge professor Notzke has been interested in wild horses for decades and for the past four years has been researching wild horse herds in North America and agrees they should be viewed as returned wildlife.
Notzke wants to see the province recognize the horses as wildlife and change their management approach as a result.
“Everything boils down to government basically arguing they are an introduced species and as a result they must be doing what alien introduced species do; and what alien introduced species do is compete with native wildlife and damage the ecosystem.”
There is little science verifying this and that has led to horses becoming scapegoated as ecological culprits, she says.
“The only scientific study that has been done on Alberta’s wild horses goes back to the 1970s. At that time, no damage or competition (with elk for food) was documented.”
It’s time for a systematic, independent and peer-reviewed research on wild horses, she says.
“If management is necessary, yes, let’s do it in a humane way by people who know what they are doing.
“I think we can do better by those animals, and we owe them as Albertans and as Canadians to do better.”
Henderson gets the final word on why the horses hold such an emotional appeal.
“People love the wild horses. Everybody that we ever take out there and let them see them really appreciates how beautiful they are out there and what they can represent to us, or should represent to us.”
pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com
A feral threat, or a ‘returned species’?
At the heart of the wild horse debate is whether they are wildlife at all.
The Alberta government and some biologists consider them feral, a term that means they are not considered indigenous to the area.
Instead, it is believed the horses descended from logging and mining stock turned loose in the early 1900s. Since then, herds have been boosted with animals illegally turned loose for free gazing or simply abandoned by their owners.
Others consider the horses a “returned species,” genetically descended from horses that evolved over millions of years on the continent until they became extinct thousands of years ago.
University of Lethbridge geographer and associate professor Claudia Notzke has studied wild horses in Canada, U.S., Europe and Mongolia and does not agree that the West Country horses should be considered an “alien species” and a threat to native wildlife and plant life.
Many scientists (paleoecologists, mammalogists, range scientists) view the wild horse in North America as returned wildlife, she says.
A big part of the problem is governments and industry are used to thinking in terms of years, but natural history must be viewed over centuries. “Most people can’t wrap their minds around a very long time frame.”
Horses co-evolved with American ecosystems before the so-called Yukon Horse became extinct 11,000 years ago, brought down by climate change and over-hunting. Horses were reintroduced by the Spanish “in many cases reoccupying its ancient ecological niche.”
Notzke says that the horses west of Sundre are marked by distinct characteristics. Genetics, colouring and archival information “suggest an early origin and longtime presence in their natural habitat.”
Wild Horses of Alberta Society president Bob Henderson says DNA shows that the horses today are related to their ancestors.
Cremona range inventory specialist Clare Tannas isn’t buying that.
Just because horses are related to their ancient ancestors doesn’t make them the same species.
“What they’re trying to do is they are trying tie them into the indigenous horses that were originally here. The introduced horse is not a truly native horse.”
Using that logic, toad flax, an invasive weed that farmers try to eradicate, should be considered a native species because it is related to blue toadflax, which is indigenous to the area, he said.
