Assateague Island Ponies-MD Side

[Skylar]

Interesting Article in the WashingtonPost this morning...

A Gnawing Problem On Assateague Island

Some Ponies Might Be Removed to Save Md. Side

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 16, 2006; Page A01

ASSATEAGUE ISLAND, Md. -- What do you do when one of your natural treasures starts eating all the others?
That's the National Park Service's dilemma on this storied barrier island. Proof of its problem can be found on a spongy stretch of salt marsh, where one section is fenced off by barbed wire.

Inside the fence, the island's native smooth cordgrass is growing thickly, a foot tall. Outside it, the grass is cropped nearly to the roots.
"Inside. Outside. A lot different," said Mark Sturm, a Park Service ecologist, gesturing at the denuded muck. The culprit is obvious: There's only one animal on Assateague that can't get through the fence.
"This is all horses," Sturm said.
Yes. Those horses. About 140 wild ponies live on the Maryland half of the island -- less famous than their cousins in Virginia, who star in the annual Chincoteague pony penning, but still a major part of the Assateague mystique.
Now, Park Service officials say, the horse population is eating away at the plants that underpin rare coastal ecosystems here. They're considering a radical solution: selling or relocating as much as a third of the Maryland herd.
"There is no doubt in my mind," Sturm said, "that in the absence of action, things are only going to get worse."
Assateague Island stretches 37 miles along the Atlantic Coast of the Eastern Shore, from Chincoteague, Va., almost to Ocean City, Md. In between, officials say, is the kind of wilderness that has become rare on the East Coast: nearly pristine sand dunes, salt marshes and coastal forests.
But much as scientists treasure the island's rare birds and flora, it is neither the piping plover nor the sea beach amaranth plant that has imbedded Assateague in childhood memories and young-adult fiction.
It's the ponies.
Horses have lived on the island since the 1600s, possibly descended from livestock that farmers stashed here to avoid taxes. They became famous in 1947 with the publication of "Misty of Chincoteague." The book celebrates an annual ritual in which horses on the Virginia side of the island are rounded up and made to swim across a channel to Chincoteague. There, some are auctioned off to benefit the town's volunteer fire department.

Now, there are two herds on the island, separated by a fence at the state line. The Virginia horses are owned by the fire department. The ones in Maryland, which roam across a national seashore and a state park, belong to the Park Service.
The Maryland herd included 28 horses in 1968. But without predators or firefighters to bother them, the ponies multiplied: By 1994, there were 166, and managers were already worried the animals would eat the island bare.

First, birth control was tried. Starting in 1994, biologists with special rifles and a good deal of patience have tracked down female horses and shot them with contraceptive-filled darts. Each female horse is allowed to give birth to only one foal in her lifetime.
The program worked, but not as fast as managers hoped. Without the stress of repeated motherhood, female horses started living years longer than they previously had, which kept the numbers up.
"The population is still more than the island ecosystem can sustain," said Carl Zimmerman, chief of resource management with the national seashore.
These days, the horses' prodigious appetite -- about 21,000 calories a day for an adult -- has altered all corners of the island. It leaves marsh birds called rails without tall grasses to hide in. It makes meals out of sea-beach amaranth, a federally threatened species.
And it leaves sand dunes without American beach grass, whose tufts and runners hold the sand in place. That's no minor problem, because Assateague is basically one enormous dune.
"If the dunes go away, the island goes away," said Ronald Pilling, past president of the Assateague Coastal Trust, an environmental group.
But no similar problem has been noticed on the Virginia side of the island, which has about the same land area and the same number of horses as Maryland's half. That might be because some sensitive areas, such as beaches and dunes, are fenced off there.
Or it could be, officials say, that the Park Service has done more research on the Maryland side.
On the Maryland side, Park Service officials say they want to reduce the horse herd by 40 to 60 animals. They stress that killing the horses is not an option and that they're unlikely to fence them in permanently. But the horses could be sent away: either sold or taken to privately owned sanctuaries on the mainland. The potential solutions were first reported by the Daily Times of Salisbury, Md.
Animal-rights groups have pushed for another option -- to wait for the contraceptive program to reduce the population on its own. That might take six years or more, but they say it's worth it.
"These are wild animals, and there's nothing they're going to want to do less than be rounded up," said John Grandy, senior vice president for wildlife at the Humane Society of the United States. "There's no reason to put those magnificent animals through that."
Park managers say they expect to make a final decision next year.
To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121502084.html?referrer=emailarticle

[trowpa]

Things are always more complicated than these articles make it seem, but it does seem that they haven't given the contraceptive measures enough time to work - the old females are still around!

[sea gazer]

The National Park Service, in an effort to lessen the environmental impact of the ponies on the Assateague Island National Seashore, is advocating a proposal that calls for the immediate removal of 30-50 horses, followed by smaller removals as deemed necessary by the Park Service.

There is a better and more humane, less expensive and less intrusive option for reducing the number of horses. Through natural selection combined with an increased intensive contraception program, the same goal can be achieved with no loss of members of the herd, no need to locate sanctuaries or monitor removed horses, and no risk of injury to the horses.

The contraception program (birth control) has been highly successful in reducing the size of the herd from 175 horses in 2001, to 135 horses currently. Additionally, each year, horses in the herd die from childbirth, car accidents, storms, injuries inflicted during fights, and natural illnesses. Within the next two to three years, horses that are reaching or are at the end of their expected life spans will die, further reducing the population by almost ten percent. To move any of these older animals from the island would cause them to suffer undue stress both physically and psychologically, possibly hastening their deaths.

Other issues to consider are maintaining the genetic integrity of the herd, the expenses involved in removing, maintaining, and monitoring removed horses, the unspecified mainland locations being considered for relocation, and the stress endured by the horses during and after the removal.

I urge you to support the Intensive Contraception Alternative with no removal as a solution for managing the pony population on Assateague. Show your support by sending an email to carl_zimmerman@nps.gov or write Carl Zimmerman, 7206 National Seashore Lane, Berlin, MD 21811, by July 11, 2008 and tell him you support the Intensive Contraception Alternative for managing the horses of Assateague and reject the NPS’s proposal to physically remove any horses as a means to reduce the size of the herd.

Please help keep these beautiful wild horses on the island – a place they and their ancestors have called home for over three hundred years.

[ffemtreed]

The horses are being removed to the protect the habitat for the birds. The reasons they list in the article are just smoke and mirrors!

[derf]

another article Horses eating themselves out of a home | delawareonline | The News Journal

[fishin'girl422]

They should just auction off some of the ponies to homes that want them like the VA side does once a year... Why not raise some money and fix the problem at the same time!

We'd bring one home to play with Bubba wouldn't we Jimmy?

[sea gazer]

Originally Posted by ffemtreed

The horses are being removed to the protect the habitat for the birds. The reasons they list in the article are just smoke and mirrors!

There are only two plover nests on the extreme south end restricted area of the island. Both are protected by cages, which have been proven to be effective against horse disturbance.

The National Park Service considers the horses an invasive species and would simply prefer they were all removed. The cost for removing, transporting, monitoring, and maintaining fifty horses will be very high, leading to increased entrance and off road fees.

This year the decision will be made to remove horses, next year the NPS will try to remove people from the off road area.