When the European settlers built their farms on the mainland, 300 years ago, their horses tended to get into the gardens and fields and eat everything the settlers tried to grow. So the British governor taxed livestock. The tax was heavy so the settlers, to avoid the taxes, grazed their horses on nearby Assateague Island. Over time these horses, being isolated from the mainland, developed their own characteristics to survive on a barrier island. They now have short legs and stocky bodies. They’re small, as horses go. They grow a heavy coat in winter and shed it in summer. They look bloated and they are. Why? Because the plants on a barrier island are surrounded by salt water. They take salt water in through their roots, and expel the salt through their foliage. So the horses are eating salty food. There are fresh water ponds on the island and these wild horses drink twice the amount of other breeds of horse. The salt makes them retain the water, so they look bloated.
Assateague lies in two states: Maryland, to the north, and Virginia, to the south. The National Park Service (NPS) manages most of the Maryland part. The Virginia part is managed by US Fish and Wildlife as the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. The NPS manages the Maryland horses. There’s another herd of horses in the Virginia part of the island and they belong to the local volunteer fire fighters. Yes, really!
Every year the fire fighters and volunteers round up their horses and swim them to nearby Fox Island. Then they auction off the foals to qualified bidders and use the money to fund the fire department. They must keep their herd down to a number that is sustainable for the wildlife refuge.
The NPS, on the other hand, likes to take as much of a hands off approach as is practical. They want to keep the horses as wild as possible. They don’t intervene with food or veterinary care for the herd, except rarely. The horses live and die on their own. But what about overpopulation? The Maryland part of the island can comfortably sustain 80 to 100 horses and they have no predators.
So the NPS introduced birth control! Each mare is injected every year. And it’s quite a chore. The horses recognize the NPS uniform and they know how close the rangers have to get to dart them, so they try to stay just out of range. Once the ranger gets a horse darted, the ranger has to find the dart and check to make sure it injected the mare.
When a mare gets to be three or four years old, she’s allowed to have a foal because it increases the health of the mare and replenishes the herd. Then she’s darted for the rest of her breeding life. Why dart the mares and not the stallions? If you miss one mare, you could get one foal, maybe two. If you miss one stallion, you could get one or two foals for each mare in his harem, if he has one.
By they way, the herd is led by the top mare. The stallion’s job is to protect his harem from other males. He starts by moving his harem away from a rival stallion. That’s the only time he, and not the lead mare decides where and when the herd goes. If that doesn’t rid him of his rival then the posturing starts. If that doesn’t work it’s teeth and hooves. Few stallions are free of battle scars.
Somewhere along the way, someone invented a more glamorous story of how these feral horses got to be here. They say a Spanish galleon sunk of the coast and the horses swam to the island. Romantic, but they just made it up for the tourists.
