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The beloved wild horses that roam free in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park could be removed under a National Park Service proposal that worries advocates who say the horses are a cultural link to the past.
Visitors driving the park’s scenic road can often see bands of horses, a symbol of the West and a sight that delights tourists. Advocates want the horses to continue roaming the Badlands and disagree with park officials who have labeled the horses “cattle.”
The Park Service is reviewing its ranching plans and writing an environmental assessment to examine the impacts of taking no further action, or removing the horses altogether.
Removal would involve capturing horses and turning some of them over to the tribes first, and then auctioning them off or turning them over to other entities. Another approach would include techniques to prevent future breeding and allow those horses to live out the rest of their lives in the park.
Horses have allies in government leaders and advocacy groups. One advocate says the horses’ popularity won’t stop park officials from removing them from the landscape of North Dakota’s top tourist attraction.
“At the end of the day, that is our national park paid for by our taxes, and those are our horses. We have a right to say what happens in our park and the animals that live there,” Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates president Chris Kman told The Associated Press.
Last year, park superintendent Angie Richman told The Bismarck Tribune that the park has no law or requirement for horses to be in the park. Regardless of the decision that is ultimately made, the park will have to reduce its roughly 200 horses to 35-60 animals based on the population target from a 1978 environmental assessment, she previously said.
Kman said he would like the park to “use science” to “properly manage the horses,” including a minimum of 150 to 200 breeding horses for genetic viability. The impacts of the park’s use of a contraceptive in mares are unclear, he added.
Evicting the horse population “would have a detrimental impact on the park as an ecosystem,” Kman said. The horses are a historical fixture, while the park reintroduced bison and elk, he said.
A couple of bands of wild horses were accidentally fenced off in the park after it was created in 1947, said Castle McLaughlin, who in the 1980s researched the history and origins of horses while working as a graduate student for the Park Service. in North Dakota.
In the early years, park officials tried to eradicate the horses, shooting them on sight and hiring local cowboys to round them up and drive them out, he said. The park even sold horses to a local zoo at one point to serve as food for big cats.
Around 1970, a new superintendent discovered that Roosevelt had written about the presence of wild horses in the Badlands during his stay there. Park officials decided to retain the horses as a historical demonstration herd to interpret the era of outdoor ranching. “However, the Park Service was still not enthusiastic about them,” McLaughlin told the AP.
“Basically, they are like cultural artifacts almost because they reflect several generations of ranchers and native peoples of western North Dakota. They were part of those communities” and may have ties to Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, he said.
In the 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt hunted and ranched as a young man in the Badlands in what is now western North Dakota. The western resort town of Medora lies at the gates of the national park that bears his name.
Roosevelt looms large in North Dakota, where a presidential library in his honor is being built near the park, a legislative push in 2019 that was championed by Republican Gov. Doug Burgum.
Burgum has offered the state to work with the Park Service to manage the horses. Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled North Dakota Legislature passed a resolution in support of horse preservation.
Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota included legislation in the Interior Department’s appropriations bill that he told the AP “would direct them to keep the horses in the park in line with what was there at the time.” the time when Teddy Roosevelt was in Medora”. .”
“Most of the opinions we have are that people want to keep the horses. We’ve been clear that we think (the park) should keep the horses,” Hoeven said. He is pushing the park to keep between 35 and 60 horses for genetic reasons.
The senator said he hopes the environmental review will be completed soon, which will provide an opportunity for public comment. Richman told the AP that the park plans to release the assessment this summer. The timetable for a final decision is unclear.
The environmental review will look at the impact of each of the three proposals in a variety of areas, Maureen McGee-Ballinger, the park’s deputy superintendent, told the AP.
There were thousands of responses during the previous public comment period on the park proposals, the vast majority of which opposed “complete livestock removal.”
Kman’s group has been active in rallying support for the horses, including writing government resolutions and contacting congressional offices, tribal leaders, similar advocacy groups and “pretty much anyone who would listen to me,” he said.
McLaughlin said the park’s effort carries “a greater chance that they will succeed this time than ever before. I mean, they’ve never been as determined and publicly open about their intentions, but I’ve also never seen the state fight for horses like they are now.”
The park’s North Unit, about 70 miles (112.65 kilometers) from Medora, has about nine longhorn cattle. The proposals would also affect longhorns, although horses are the biggest concern. Hoeven said his legislation does not address longhorns. Livestock are managed according to a 1970 plan.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park “is one of the few national parks that has horses, and that sets it apart,” North Dakota Trade Director of Marketing and Tourism Sara Otte Coleman said in January at a news conference with Burgum. and legislators.
Wild horses also roam the Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland and Virginia.
It’s impossible to delineate the economic impact of horses on tourism, but their popularity is high with the media, photographers, travel writers and social media influencers who promote them, Otte Coleman said.
“Removing the horses really removes a feature that visitors to our park are used to seeing,” he said.
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