MARCH 13, 2024:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Advocates for some 200 wild horses roaming North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park are hoping a signal of support from Congress will prevent the removal of the beloved animals from the rugged landscape.
A National Park Service decision is expected around April 2024 as to the horses’ future in the park’s colorful, rolling Badlands. It’s part of an ongoing process to craft a park management plan for “livestock” — a term horse advocates reject.
Republican Sen. John Hoeven ‘s legislation, tucked in the annual Interior and Environment budget bill that Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed, strongly recommends that the Park Service keep the horses in place. It also signals a potential future action that would deny any funding intended to remove them.
“Now we’ll continue to have a dialogue with them and hopefully get to a good solution,” Hoeven said in an interview with The Associated Press.
A remaining question is how many horses would ensure the long-term preservation of the herd. Advocates want to see a genetically viable herd of at least 150 horses to avoid inbreeding issues. Park Superintendent Angie Richman has said the horses, if they ultimate stay, would still have to be reduced to 35 to 60 animals under a 1978 environmental assessment.
Richman and the National Park Service did not respond to emails for comment on Hoeven’s legislation.
Previously, park officials have said their evaluation of whether the horses should stay is in line with their policies to remove non-native species when they pose a potential risk to resources. The park has proposed removing the horses quickly or gradually or taking no action.
Advocates have feared a predetermined ouster of the horses, whose predecessors were accidentally fenced into the park in the 1950s and were subject to subsequent roundups.
The horses’ origins include Native American tribes, area ranches and domestic stallions introduced to the park from the late 1970s through the 1990s, said Castle McLaughlin, who researched the horses as a graduate student while working for the Park Service in North Dakota in the 1980s.
“They really are sort of living history because they reflect the kinds of horses people in North Dakota, both Native and non-Native, had over the last 150 years,” said McLaughlin, who cheered state leaders’ commitment to preserving the horses and said she is cautiously optimistic but still skeptical the Park Service will “do the right thing here.”
The horses are often seen along the park’s scenic road and hiking trails, thrilling visitors and photographers who happen upon them.
A vast majority of public comments on the decision process has favored keeping the horses.
Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates President Chris Kman said she is hopeful the legislation results in the horses staying, but she awaits the park’s decision and wonders what the legislation means for a management plan for the horses.
“I don’t think that any of us will trust, even with an act of Congress, that the park is going to do the right thing and allow a genetically viable herd of horses to stay,” she said. “…Their attitude all along has pretty much been, you know, ‘We can’t keep the horses. We understand the public wants them, but we’re not doing it anyway,’ no matter what the overwhelming response was.”
Last year, Gov. Doug Burgum offered state collaboration for maintaining the horses in the park. Richman has said park officials “are certainly willing to work with the governor and the state to find a good outcome.”
All of the horses are in the park’s South Unit near Medora. Park officials’ ultimate decision will also affect about nine longhorn cattle in the park’s North Unit.
NOVEMBER 24, 2023:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — About 200 wild horses roam free in a western North Dakota national park, but that number could shrink as the National Park Service is expected to decide next year (2024) whether it will eliminate that population.
Advocates fear a predetermined outcome that will remove the beloved animals from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. An extended public comment period ends Friday on the recent environmental assessment of the park’s three proposals: reduce the horse population quickly, reduce it gradually or take no immediate action.
The horses have some powerful allies — including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and U.S. Sen. John Hoeven — while advocates are pulling out all the stops to see that the animals stay. Park officials say they want to hear from the public.
The horses are popular with park visitors, who often see and photograph them along the park’s scenic road and hiking trails through the rugged Badlands.
Evaluating whether the horses belong in the park has “been a long time in coming, and it realigns us with our overarching policies to remove non-native species from parks whenever they pose a potential risk to resources,” said Jenny Powers, a wildlife veterinarian who leads the wildlife health program for the National Park Service.
“This isn’t an easy decision for us, but it is one that is directly called for by our mission and mandates,” she told The Associated Press last month.
One of the horses’ biggest advocates fears park officials have already decided to oust the horses. Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates President Chris Kman cites several alternatives for keeping horses that park officials considered but dismissed in the recent environmental assessment.
In the document, the Park Service said those alternatives wouldn’t be “in alignment with NPS priorities to maintain the native prairie ecosystem” and wouldn’t address the animals’ impacts, among its reasons.
Kman said she is “optimistic that we will ultimately win this fight. I don’t have any faith that the park will do the right thing and keep the horses in the park.”
Even if the horses ultimately stay, Park Superintendent Angie Richman said they would have to be reduced to 35-60 animals under a 1978 environmental assessment. The ongoing process is part of the park’s proposed management plan for “livestock,” a term the horses’ allies reject.
Wild horses were accidentally fenced into the park in its early years. They were eventually kept as a historic demonstration herd after years of efforts to eradicate them, according to Castle McLaughlin, who researched the horses’ history in the 1980s as a graduate student working for the Park Service in North Dakota.
Wild horse advocates would like the park to conduct a greater environmental review, and want to ultimately see a genetically viable herd of at least 150 horses maintained.
A vast majority of previous public comments opposed removal of the horses, making it “really difficult to understand why the government would choose to take them away from the American people,” said Grace Kuhn, communications director for the American Wild Horse Campaign.
The wild horses “have a right to be in the national park” and align with Roosevelt’s sentiment to preserve cultural resources for future generations, she said.
“Essentially, the Park Service by implementing a plan to either eradicate them quickly or eradicate them slowly, they’re thumbing their noses at the American public and their mission,” Kuhn said last month.
Burgum in January offered state collaboration for keeping the horses in the park. His office and park officials have discussed options for the horses. State management or assistance in managing the horses in the park are options North Dakota would consider; relocation is not, spokesperson for the governor’s office Mike Nowatzki said Monday.
Park officials “are certainly willing to work with the governor and the state to find a good outcome,” Park Superintendent Richman said last month, adding that the park was working with the governor on “a lot of different options.”
“It would be premature to share pre-decisional discussions at this time,” she said Wednesday.
Sen. Hoeven has worked on negotiations with park officials, and included legislation in the U.S. Interior Department’s appropriations bill to preserve the horses. “If that doesn’t get it done,” he would pursue further legislation, he said last month.
“My objective is to keep horses in the park,” Hoeven said.
The park’s ultimate decision also will affect nine longhorn cattle in the park’s North Unit. All of the horses are in the park’s South Unit.
SEPTEMBER 27, 2023:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The National Park Service has turned to the public to help decide whether the famous wild horses in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park should stay or go.
The federal agency launched a 30-day public comment period on Monday (Sept. 25, 2023). It also released a draft environmental assessment of the wild horse herd that said removal of the horses would benefit native wildlife and vegetation, but may lessen the experience of visitors who come to the park to see the horses or cattle, the Bismarck Tribune reported.
North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum said in a statement Tuesday that he will continue urging NPS to keep the wild horses in the park.
“These horses are a hugely popular tourist attraction, embodying the untamed spirit of the Badlands while also reminding us of the deep ties to Roosevelt’s ranching and conservation legacy,” Burgum said.
He added that “wild horses roamed those lands during Roosevelt’s transformative years in the Badlands, when President Truman signed the bill creating the park in 1947 and when it received official national park status in 1978.”
The federal agency’s proposal has worried advocates who say the horses are a cultural link to the past and disagree with park officials who have branded the horses as “livestock.”
Visitors who drive the scenic park road can often see bands of horses, a symbol of the West and sight that delights tourists.
Removal would entail capturing horses and giving some of them first to tribes, and later auctioning the animals or giving them to other entities. Another approach would include techniques to prevent future reproduction and would allow those horses to live out the rest of their lives in the park.
A couple bands of wild horses were accidentally fenced into the park after it was established in 1947, Castle McLaughlin has said. In the 1980s, McLaughlin researched the history and origins of the horses while working as a graduate student for the Park Service in North Dakota.
Park officials in the early years sought to eradicate the horses, shooting them on sight and hiring local cowboys to round them up and remove them, she said. The park even sold horses to a local zoo at one point to be food for large cats.
Around 1970, a park superintendent discovered Roosevelt had written about the presence of wild horses in the Badlands during his time there. Park officials decided to retain the horses as a historic demonstration herd to interpret the open-range ranching era.
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