Month: May 2012

Federal Court Forces Interior Department to Consider Scientific Evidence Regarding Wild Horse Management

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Washington, DC – May 10, 2012 – The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has rejected an attempt by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to withhold and ignore critical scientific evidence in its decision-making process for the implementation of a precedent-setting plan to castrate wild stallions. At issue were expert declarations submitted to the BLM from leading experts in wild horse behavior and biology outlining the devastating impacts of castration on the health and natural behaviors of wild free-roaming stallions and wild horse herds.

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Whence the Domestic Horse?

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Shards of pottery with traces of mare’s milk, mass gravesites for horses, and drawings of horses with plows and chariots: These are some of the signs left by ancient people hinting at the importance of horses to their lives. But putting a place and date on the domestication of horses has been a challenge for archaeologists. Now, a team of geneticists studying modern breeds of the animal has assembled an evolutionary picture of its storied past. Horses, the scientists conclude, were first domesticated 6000 years ago in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe, modern-day Ukraine and West Kazakhstan. And as the animals were domesticated, they were regularly interbred with wild horses, the researchers say.

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Wild Horse Herd’s Fate Lies in Preservation Clash

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COROLLA, N.C. — Come summer, the beaches of this barrier island will be choked with cars and sunbathers, but in the off-season the land is left to wild horses. Smallish, tending toward chestnut and black, they wander past deserted vacation rentals in harems of five or six.

Thousands of them once roamed the length of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the likely descendants from mounts that belonged to Spanish explorers five centuries ago. Now their numbers have dwindled to a few hundred, the best known living on federal parkland at Shackleford Banks.

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The Kentucky Derby: The Ultimate Blood Sport?

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In 2007 the world was appropriately outraged when Michael Vick, an NFL superstar, was convicted of running an illegal dog-fighting ring. Dog fighting is widely considered the sport of thugs, and perpetrators are rightly rounded up and imprisoned. Americans have a somewhat different opinion of the “sport of kings,” however: Last year some 14.54 million people tuned in to what they did not realize were two of the most brutal minutes in television.

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Montana Therapy Horse Touches Hearts of Local Residents

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CORVALLIS, MT — His baby pictures are hanging on the wall at the arena.

There are plenty of other pictures too: photographs of him performing in front of the grandstands, some of him walking in a parade.

As nice as those are, though, they aren’t what catch your eye.

That’s reserved for the pictures of children with smiles that stretch wide across their faces. Some hoist blue ribbons. Others beam pure joy.

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