User:LynnWysong/sandbox/Feral Horse Ecology

Feral Horse Ecology is the study of the underlying need to manage free-roaming feral horses and burros, (colloquially called "wild") on public lands in North America. In Canada, management of is a provincial matter, with several associations and societies helping to preserve wild horses in areas such as British Columbia, Alberta and Nova Scotia. In the United States, specific groups of animals are managed under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. .

Natural and Recent History
The only extant true wild horse is the Przewalski's horse, native to Mongolia. However, the horse family Equidae and the genus Equus evolved in North America and existed there until the beginning of the Holocene era. Studies using mitochondrial DNA as well as DNA of recent individuals shows there once were two closely related horse species in North America, the wild horse (Equus ferus), and the stilt-legged horse (taxonomically assigned to various names). In the Old World, Equus ferus gave rise to four types of ancestral horses, two of which were adapted to warmer climates. However, the genus Equus in North America died out at the end of the last ice age around 10-12 thousand years ago, possibly due to a changing climate or the impact of newly arrived human hunters. Thus at the beginning of the Columbian Exchange, there were no equids in the Americas at all. Horses first returned with the conquistadors, beginning with Columbus, who imported horses from Spain to the West Indies on his second voyage in 1493. Domesticated horses came to the mainland with the arrival of Cortés in 1519. Thus, all "wild" horses in the Americas today are feral descendants of imported domesticated animals.

History
Fewer than 8,000 such horses remain in Canada today. By 1965, only four small herds of horses survived– three in British Columbia and one in Siffleur Wilderness Area near Calgary. In 1974, the official "wild" horse population in Alberta was only around 1,000 due to horse hunting on crown land. In 1993, Alberta introduced the Horse Capture Plan which regulates the capture of wild horses, with between 25 and 35 horses being captured each year. However, during the 2011-12 capture season a record 216 horses were captured in Alberta.

Provincial matter
In Canada, there is no federal protection for free-roaming horses because Environment Canada considers horses to be introduced foreign animals, not native; therefore they do not qualify for protection under the Species at Risk Act. Instead, they are protected through provincial jurisdiction. Today, feral horses are considered domestic livestock, not wildlife, under Alberta’s Stray Animals Act. In British Columbia horses are controlled for range management purposes through the Grazing Act.

"Wildies" of the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta
Free-roaming horses of the Eastern Slopes of Alberta are known locally as "Wildies". On November 1, 2014, the not-for-profit advocacy group Wild Horses of Alberta Society (WHOAS) entered into an historic five-year agreement with the Alberta provincial government's Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development (ESRD). This agreement authorizes WHOAS to effectively and humanely manage the feral horse population in a portion of the Sundre Equine Zone on the Eastern Slopes. WHOAS will manage the population through selective contraception using the Porcine Zona Pellucida Vaccine, or PZP. The PZP vaccine will prevent the mares from reproducing for up to three years, which will help to maintain the population at manageable levels. WHOAS will also run a horse rescue facility for those horses that run into trouble and that need to be removed from the wild. The rescue facility will also take in orphaned foals to be raised, gentled and adopted out.

Wild horses of Sable Island
Since 1960 the horses of Sable Island, unlike those in the rest of Canada, were protected under the Sable Island Regulations section of the Canadian Shipping Act. Following the designation of Sable Island as a National Park Reserve in December, 2013, the horses are now fully protected by Parks Canada as wildlife under the Canada National Parks Act and the National Parks Wildlife Regulations. Parks Canada considers the Sable Island horses as 'naturalized wildlife’ and, as such, they are being managed as a taxon equal to other species living on the island.