Dear Editor,

I was recently “interviewed”(or should I say shouted at) by Ted Williams for his article entitled “Horse Sense” for Audubon Magazine which was recently republished in the Post. A more accurate title for his article might have been Wild Horse Nonsense. His long held negative (some would say hateful) opinions about North America’s wild equids bear no resemblance to fact or contemporary science.

 

For the past 13 years I have been documenting the lives of wild horses and have visited wild horse herds in all ten states Western States in which they live. I am the proud adopter of Trace, a wild horse who regularly takes me high into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above my ranch. I marvel at his affectionate personality, steady temperament and tremendous athleticism. Trace came from the Pryor Mountains of Montana, the only wild horse herd area remaining in the entire state and a place that has become a second home for me.

 

As a wildlife filmmaker it has been my rare privilege to chronicle the life of a nearly white colt I named Cloud on the day he was born in these spectacular Montana mountains. My documentation of Cloud represents the only study of a wild animal from birth in our hemisphere and it has resulted in two PBS specials about him as well as two books. My work has instilled in me a deep respect for the complex and dynamic lives of America’s mustangs. I marvel at how tenaciously they fight to preserve their freedom and their families. And I am saddened at seeing their lives shattered when round ups destroy the fabric of their rich society.

 

Instead of respect, Mr. Williams attacks these beautiful remnants of the past using an outdated mythology created by the Bureau of Land Management and the livestock industry to secure a place for literally millions of head of cattle and sheep on our public lands. To blame a few thousand wild horses for the damage to these lands is truly irresponsible journalism and to deny the new science about the native wild horse is turning a blind eye to the truth.

 

Over the past decade extensive and on-going DNA analysis conducted by respected geneticists in the U.S. and Europe have discovered direct links between America’s wild horse herds and horses brought to the New World by the Conquistadors in the early 1500s. The Pryor Wild Horse Herd in Montana where Cloud lives is one of these Spanish herds. Like their closest contemporary horse relatives, the Puerto Rican Paso Finos, they descend from the Caribbean where the Spanish raised horses for the Conquest of Mexico and South America.

Going back much farther, fossil evidence substantiates the wild horses’ right to native status here on the continent. The recent discovery of a 25,000-year-old horse buried in the Klondike permafrost confirms that the horse which appears to have died out 8,000-10,000 years ago was a modern horse, much like the horses found in the Pryors. In other words, the horse developed to a finished form on the North American continent in harmony with their environment, an environment that still exists today. It is accurate then to refer to wild horses as returned natives, and a strong case can be made that the ecosystem benefits from their presence. They are most certainly not alien to the ecological balance of these native habitats since they were gone for less than the blink of an eye in geologic time.

 

The wild equids of North America, like equids world-wide, are exquisite prey animals. And they can live in balance with their environment, if allowed to do so. The Montgomery Pass wild horses on the California-Nevada border have not been rounded up for 25 years and have never been darted with infertility drugs, yet their population has remained stable due to predation.

 

In the Pryor Mountains the herd achieved zero population growth because of mountain lion predation. The balance of nature could prevail elsewhere if the Bureau of Land Management, the agency that manages most wild horse herds on our public lands, would foster natural systems. Instead, they favor destructive human manipulation not only of wild horses but predators as well. Mr. Williams never mentioned this. His article is short on facts and long on negative sensationalism and it does little to address the apparent BLM strategy to eliminate the few remaining wild horses from their legal homes.

 

Sincerely,
Ginger Kathrens
Volunteer Executive Director
The Cloud Foundation, Inc.
www.thecloudfoundation.org