Advocates for the wild horses of the Yukon Territory are seeking official status for the equines, wanting them designated as a native species instead of feral animals.
“‘Feral’ … has a negative connotation, and just isn’t an accurate word for them, since the current wild horses have never been domesticated,” said Heather Brown, of the Friends of the Yukon Wild Horses Society told CBC News.
The society cites approximately 21 horses in an area west of Whitehorse and have been running wild for around 30 years. According to the CBC, the origins of the current horse herd is unclear; some think the horses might be descendants of outfitters’ horses, or can even trace their lineage back to the Gold Rush.
What is certain is that the herd has some protection under the Animal Protection and Control Act, which bans hunting, injuring or killing them. But not everyone in the Yukon are fans. “They are viewed as feral because they’ve had the 4,000 or 5,000 years of domestication in between,” says Aud Fischer, also a member of the Friends of the Yukon Wild Horses Society. “And so people, a lot of people, view them as invasive and a danger to ecosystems and as nuisance animals.”
Fischer adds that the Yukon was home to wild horses going as far back in history as the last ice age. Instead, she thinks the wild horses should be designated a “reintroduced native species” and hopes the Yukon government will create a “humane management plan” to protect them.
The issue of if the horses can be considered “native” is up for debate. Ross MacPhee, a paleomammologist and curator emeritus of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, tells the CBC that “native species are those that originate in a particular area, or moved there naturally.”
The current DNA and fossil evidence seems to show that horses native to North America became extinct between 13,000 and 6,000 years ago, and domesticated animals were shipped to the Yukon. But MacPhee adds that the wild horses in the Yukon today do share some DNA and evolutionary history with native horses that roamed wild across North America.
In the CBC piece, MacPhee added that regardless of not being direct descendants of those wild equines, the current herd do “fulfil the same ecological role that native horses once did.” Because of this, he feels the herd should be considered a native species, even though they were introduced by humans.
The ecological role MacPhee is referring to is preserving the grasslands of the area. “[Wild horses] play a substantial role in things like seed distribution, which seems … kind of a minor thing, but it really isn’t when you’re talking about native grasses,” MacPhee told the news outlet. “Many of them actually rely on the vertebrates distributing their seeds. And since that doesn’t happen anymore, at least on the scale that it did in the past, you have a situation in which grasslands have been retreating.”
MacPhee adds that grasslands are a biome and hold a large quantity of carbon, which means that wild horses have an indirect impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
For its part, the Yukon government points to some studies that imply that wild horses have a negative effect on other ungulates such as elk, sheep, bison and caribou, and suggest that if the herd grows, so would their negative impact. But a lack of research leaves the question of if the horses should be reclassified as a native species unclear and unanswered – for now.
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