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A group advocating for Alberta’s free-roaming horses has entered into an agreement with the province to “humanely manage” the population by starting both contraception and adoption programs.  The memorandum of understanding between Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development and the Wild Horses of Alberta Society will allow the group to help manage horses in the Sundre area.
“It’s a five-year agreement,” said Duncan MacDonnell, spokesman for Alberta Environment. “The agreement allows Wild Horses of Alberta Society to undertake two experimental programs to help control the wild horse populations.” But it doesn’t necessarily preclude another capture season this spring, he said, noting that decision is still pending. Provincial officials have maintained the horse population needs to be balanced with the health of the grasslands — a position that led to controversy last spring as the province allowed a six-week capture season for up to 196 horses that could be kept for personal use or sent for slaughter. Only 15 animals were rounded up by two ranchers, but it led to protests by wild horse advocates, who suggested there were fewer animals than the province reported. The official 2014 count showed there were 880 horses in the foothills between Kananaskis Country and Sundre, down about 100 horses from the previous year. It led activists and conservationists to suggest last spring’s capture season was unnecessary.Throughout the debate, others suggested the province try other methods to manage the population. The agreement between the province and the Wild Horses of Alberta Society includes a contraception program targeting female horses and an adoption program allowing the organization to take in and adopt out any young horses. Bob Henderson, president of the society, couldn’t be reached for comment, but a news release issued by the group said it’s excited about the opportunity to help manage the horse population. It noted that the contraception program will select a limited number of mares to receive a vaccine to prevent pregnancy for up to three years without disrupting the herd structure and dynamics. The adoption program will allow the group to take in any young foals that have been abandoned or injured. It also allows rescue of any horses that stray onto private land or roadways. The programs will all be run on donations from the public, including eight hectares of land, where a safe handling facility will be built. Officials with the province said the Wild Horses of Alberta Society will be required to show results from both programs over the five-year period. Source: Calgary Herald by Colette Derworiz  Is Wyoming waking up to the reality of our nation’s unworkable approach to managing wild horses? The horse issue is so heated and divisive, that I’m a natural skeptic.
However, the recent news that a group of Wyoming legislators is urging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to rethink its approach to horses makes me, at least, somewhat optimistic. According to an Oct. 28 article in The Horse magazine, legislators also plan to work with Gov. Matt Mead’s office to educate Wyoming residents about horse management issues. Although this discussion is prompted more by land-use concerns than by wild horses, more dialogue is welcome. Federally protected wild horses on public land have no intrinsic economic value, yet compete with the enormous economic interests of the livestock industry, mining, energy development, and recreational use. According to financial data supplied by the BLM to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, the agency spent 67 percent of its total annual $77 million wild horse budget, in 2014, rounding up, removing and stockpiling horses from federal lands. It spent a mere 0.3 percent on population growth suppression for 450 mares. Three of five wild horses now live in government holding pens and pasturages, costing taxpayers an estimated $120,000 per day. Worse, each removal merely speeds up the reproductive success of horses remaining in the field. Although BLM field censusing is not scientific, the agency claims there are 40,000 wild horses on federal lands that can sustain less than 30,000. With few natural predators, however, populations will grow. The federal government’s Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program can place only a few thousand horses each year. There is no good outcome to the current situation until BLM starts to aggressively curb wild horse population increases. One strategy that could help significantly is more widespread use of wildlife contraception, as advised by the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. The immunocontraceptive vaccine, native PZP, has a long track record of success in wild horses, dating back more than 25 years. Today, native PZP vaccine is used in more than 20 Herd Management Areas (HMAs)—several in Wyoming. Model PZP programs at McCullough Peaks HMA, near Cody, and the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, traversing the Wyoming/Montana border, have sharply reduced population growth. Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range, near Grand Junction, Colorado, has also demonstrated the value of fertility control. This vaccine blocks fertilization in mares and other animals, such as bison, elephants and urban deer. It can be administered by a rifle-fired dart and doesn’t harm existing pregnancies or an animal’s health. Unlike earlier, hormone-based wildlife contraceptives, PZP breaks down in the mare’s body and will not pass into the surrounding environment, or to other horses. The vaccine is also reversible. BLM has been studying contraceptive agents for years and is said to be holding out for a longer-lasting vaccine. Mares that receive native PZP need boosters every year for the first two-to-three years and then every-other or every third year. This presents challenges in large HMAs. However, horses can be gathered expressly for treatment in temporary corrals through bait or water trapping. That presents a minor challenge compared to the expense and man-hours required for humanely accommodating growing numbers of once-wild horses. Had more HMAs started using immunocontraception 15-plus years ago, as advised by the scientific community, horse populations would be far lower. In some HMAs and wild horse ranges, volunteer groups have been trained to dart mares with native PZP and to track those requiring boosters. This is far less costly than paying more and more to round up, feed and care for these animals off the range. Caring for a horse over a 30-year life span costs taxpayers around $45,000, compared to well under $1,000 to gather, treat, and release a wild mare with native PZP. How long should we wait for the perfect solution? I hope our legislators and the BLM conclude that further delay in not using the best available tool we have—native PZP—makes no horse sense. Source: OpEd Casper Star Tribune by Patricia M. Fazio, PhD Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D., is an environmental editor, historian, and scientist, with a special interest in the federal wild horse issue—leading to her dissertation on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, completed in 1995.  Guss, the Stallion. Photo: ©Corolla Wild Horse Fund A young stallion named Gus just might be the key to saving the wild horses that roam the beaches of Corolla. The genetically-diverse wild stallion from Cedar Island, some 250 miles away, was released into the Corolla herd on Thursday. “He’s the offspring of some Shackelford horses who are the same breed as ours – Colonial Spanish Mustangs. They have far more maternal lines than we do. We are down to one maternal line. Our gene pool is very shallow. We are having birth defects, so Gus is historic,” explained Corolla Wild Horse Fund Executive Director Karen McCalpin. The process to get Gus into the herd has taken years and required approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Earlier this year, McCalpin pulled DNA samples by dart gun from two wild stallions living on Cedar Island. It was then analyzed by Dr. Gus Cothran of Texas A&M University who was able to confirm that the horses were Colonial Spanish Mustangs. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund decided to name the stallion Gus in Dr. Cothran’s honor. After Gus tested negative for Equine Infectious Anemia, staff from the CWHF made the trip to Cedar Island to transport Gus to the north beach in Corolla. The herd on Cedar Island has been owned and cared for by Woody and Nena Hancock. “Gus is the first step in turning that headed for extinction situation around. Without the introduction of new genes into the Corolla herd – they would cease to exist. We are already at a genetic bottleneck where we are having consistent birth defects in foals,” McCalpin told NewsChannel 3′s Todd Corillo on Monday. “Obviously we are hoping Gus finds some girlfriends and that offspring that he would produce would be the first genetically-diverse offspring here in centuries. We hope if not next year, the year after we’re going to see a foal that we know is the beginning of turning around the path to extinction for these horses,” she continued. As she watched Gus idly graze in his new Corolla home on an abnormally warm late-November day, McCalpin couldn’t help but be excited. “Seeing him is probably bigger than winning the lottery for me. People talk about a bucket list and that was certainly on my bucket list. It’s just amazing to me that we were able to do this.” McCalpin hopes to be able to return to Cedar Island in the spring to DNA test mares that could be released in Corolla as well. Source: WTKR by Todd Corillo The mission of The Corolla Wild Horse Fund is to protect, conserve, and responsibly manage the herd of wild Colonial Spanish Mustangs roaming freely on the northernmost North Carolina’s Currituck Outer Banks. The organization employs a darted immunocontraception program using the FDA approved substance PZP (porcine zona pelucida). It is conducted under the auspices of the Humane Society of the United States and the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Montana.
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