Weve got a problem here. In North Carolina, the wild mustangs are left dodging tourists, developers and drunks. Mass interaction with people is a killer. • The horses have survived on this narrow barrier island for some 500 years, thought to be descendants of Colonial mounts that swam to shore when Spanish galleons ran aground on the shoals and sandbars of North Carolinas Outer Banks. Theyve withstood centuries of hurricanes and noreasters on this isolated spit of sand, marsh and woods, and became a huge draw for visitors. But the horses now face serious threats, say those who manage the herd: a boom in McMansion-style vacation homes on this once-pristine stretch of coast and federal policies that are leaving the mustangs severely inbred and starting to suffer from genetic deformities. • The government has described the herd, some of the last remaining wild horses in the Eastern United States, as pests that compete for resources with federally protected birds. The battle over the herd on this island comes as horse advocates and the Interior Department clash nationwide. On the other side of the country, the government is rounding up wild horses in the West and confining them at the urging of cattle ranchers who say the animals deplete the range. • Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., has taken up the cause. The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed his bill in 2012 and 2013 to allow the herd to grow to 130 horses and to let the Corolla Wild Horse Fund bring a few horses from the Shackleford Banks, on another island at the far southern tip of the Outer Banks, in order to infuse some fresh genes into the herd. But the bill has been opposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and it goes nowhere in the Senate. • Nowhere else can someone rent a vacation home, have a cup of coffee on the porch and watch wild mustangs frolic in the surf. The horses offer a needed sense of the wild in a country thats increasingly giving way to development. READ MORE: on-msn/VB2qqj
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 03:28:17 +0000
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