Park officials have scrapped an environmental assessment process that could have resulted in the removal of wild horses that have roamed the park’s south unit since before the park was established.
April 25, 2024 at 1:36 PM
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MEDORA — The fate of the wild horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which have been at risk of removal, has been resolved after more than two years of uncertainty: The horses will stay.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., announced Thursday, April 25, that he has “secured a commitment” from the National Park Service to maintain the wild horses in the park.
The park service will “immediately terminate its proposed removal of horses” at the park under an environmental assessment process started in 2022, according to Hoeven.
As a result, Hoeven said, the existing management plan for the horses will remain in place.
“It is a big deal that they’ve now committed to having horses in the park, permanently,” Hoeven told The Forum.
The commitment to keep the horses came from officials including Herbert Frost, the park service’s regional director, and Angela Richman, the park superintendent, Hoeven said.
“This will allow for a healthy herd of wild horses to be maintained at the park, managed in a way to support the genetic diversity among the herd and preserve the park’s natural resources,” according to a statement from Hoeven’s office.
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Now that the park service has committed to keeping the horses, there will be a public discussion about how to manage the herd and what constitutes a genetically healthy herd, Hoeven said.
That must be a “very thoughtful, deliberative, inclusive process,” he said. “There’s no time limit on this.”
Public opinion, not only in North Dakota but around the country, has been overwhelmingly in support of keeping the horses in their home in the rugged badlands of the park, the senator said.
“People love not only horses, but wild horses,” Hoeven said, noting the horses are accessible to the public in the park. “Where do they have an opportunity?”
“I’m shocked,” said Chris Kman, founder of Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates, a group in Dickinson that has been working to keep the horses. “It’s excellent news. I’m very happy about this. I just hope they keep a genetically viable herd.”
The horses have been managed under a 1978 environmental assessment that horse advocates say isn’t a true management plan.
That study set the goal of maintaining a herd of 35 to 60 wild horses. The size of the herd has routinely far exceeded that number and recently has been estimated at 200 horses, divided among about 15 bands, each led by a dominant stallion.
The number of horses required to maintain a genetically viable herd with healthy diversity varies, but experts have said that number ranges anywhere from 100 to 240. The higher the number of reproductive horses, the greater the degree of genetic diversity.
The number of reproductive horses is in question because some mares have not returned to fertility after years of administering a birth-control drug, researchers found.
The park has been giving the drug by darting mares of reproductive age since experiments started in 2009.
Researchers at Colorado State University, who conducted the study, notified federal officials in 2020 that 19 of 24 mares, or 79%, that were initially given the vaccine in 2009 had not regained fertility following a booster dose given in 2013.
Under the environmental assessment process that has now been scrapped, the park’s preference was to remove the horses, either gradually, allowing horses to live out their days in the park, or quickly through helicopter roundup removals.
Another option was to keep the horses under current management policy.
Hoeven has been a leading advocate for maintaining the horses in the park at numbers that would ensure the herd’s genetic viability.
As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hoeven inserted a provision in annual funding legislation directing the park service to maintain “the historic scene commensurate with the historic herds during the period when President Theodore Roosevelt was a rancher in the area.” Roosevelt raised cattle and hunted in the Little Missouri Badlands near Medora during the open-range ranching era in the 1880s, an experience that inspired him to be what many regard as the greatest conservation president.
“These wild horses are emblematic of President Theodore Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota, a formative experience that shaped his presidency and lasting legacy,” Hoeven said. “Given the broad public support for maintaining the wild horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, as well as the measure we passed through Congress, this is the right call by NPS.”
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Now that the decision has been made to keep the horses, it will be critical to ensure that the herd is genetically healthy, Kman said.
The horses should have a true management plan, one that is shaped with input from the public, she said. The environmental assessment examined only whether the horses should be removed, not how they should be managed and how big the herd should be.
Richman was not immediately available for comment. In a news release, the park confirmed that it has terminated the environmental assessment.
“The park appreciates the comments and public engagement over the last three years. Information gathered will be used to inform future efforts to manage livestock, horse and cattle herds,” the park’s news release said.
Wild and feral horses were inadvertently fenced into the south unit when the park erected a fence before reintroducing bison to the park in the 1950s. Since the park was established in 1947, park officials had been trying to remove the horses until the early 1970s, when the decision was made to keep horses to depict the open range era of Roosevelt’s time in the Badlands.
Documents show that back in the 1990s, then Superintendent Noel Poe, after consulting with an equine geneticist, decided to keep a herd of 140 horses, in spite of the 1978 goal of maintaining a herd of 35 to 60 horses.
“He said there was currently no policy, no document, that they were using,” Kman said, referring to a memo Poe wrote in the 1990s. “Poe said they weren’t managing the horses under anything.”
Now that the decision has been made to keep the horses, Kman and others will push to provide federal protection for the horses, a process she said likely will take years to pass Congress.
Hoeven said he will wait and see to decide whether to push for federal protection of the horses.
As long as park officials live up to their commitment to permanently keep the horses in the park, and to maintain the herd at a size that is a genetically viable, that might not be necessary “as long as they’re doing that and doing that well,” he said.
Even though some details remain to ensure the herd’s long-term protection, “It’s a good day for the horses,” Kman said.
Exposing the Big Game 
Oh thank goodness. Glad to hear it.