Sable Island:
The wild horses' history and future
The wild horses of
Sable Island are synonymous with the sandbar's mysterious, untamed, romantic
image. What is it about the horses that draws people in?
Sable island is tiny.
It's a long stretch of sand and grass in the atlantic ocean, 300km from Nova
Scotia. It has beed declared a National Park, but it's not easy to visit, only five
people live there ful time - scientists and park officials. Even if it is open
to visitors, there's no easy way to get there.
And the island is home
to hundreds of wild, untamed, horses.
"Wild and free
horses — I don't think it's too much more complicated than that," said
Bill Freedman, an ecology professor at Dalhousie University.
"I think some
people understand that they don't belong on Sable Island but they admire the
fact that once they got there they managed to survive all by themselves without
the aid of people."
How did they get there?
The popular story is
that the Sable Island horses swam ashore from one of the island's many
shipwrecks over 250 years ago. It is also posible that the horses were
deliberately brought to the island during the 18th century.
The
horses on Sable Island today are possible descendants of animals that were
seized by the British from the Acadians during their expulsion from Nova Scotia
in the late 1750s and 1760s. Thomas Hancock, a Boston merchant and shipowner,
was paid to transport the Acadians to the American colonies.
Hancock
either bought or helped himself to some of the horses abandoned by the Acadians
and is thought to have transported the horses to Sable Island along with cows,
sheep, goats and hogs.
"They
were introduced to the island and the idea was that the horses would take care
of themselves, they would reproduce, their numbers would build up and
periodically they could be harvested and sold at a profit," said Freedman.
"At
the same time that the horses were introduced, other domestic animals were as
well — but only the horses survived in the longer term."
How do they survive?
Sable
Island's climate is more moderate than mainland Nova Scotia — meaning it's less
hot in the summer and less cold in the winter.
Still,
the conditions can be harsh and the horse population — currently thought to be
about 550 — fluctuates every year.
The
horses eat maram, a touch stalky grass that grows throughout the island.
"The
horses dig into the sand on the eastern side of the island to create a well and
then line up to drink at these wells," he said.
Have the horses always been free?
After a
light house station was built on Sable Island in 1801,many of the horses were
put to work. Men patrolled the island on horseback looking for ships in
distress — and the horses were also used to haul lifeboats and life-saving gear
to shipwreck sites.
In the
1950s, some biologists working on Sable Island said the animals were damaging
the habitats of the ecologically sensitive island and proposed they be removed.
The Canadian government planned to ship them to the mainland to work in coal
mines or be killed.
The headlines
startled Canadians:
"Ponies
of Sable Island to be culled," one newspaper proclaimed.
Schoolchildren
across Canada began a letter-writing campaign to Prime Minister John
Diefenbaker, pleading with him to stop the cull. In response, Diefenbaker amended
the Canada Shipping Act — which governed access to Sable Island — and declared
the horses fully protected.
"No
person shall, without having first obtained written permission, harm, interfere
with, feed or otherwise have anything to do with the ponies on Sable
Island," reads the Canada Shipping Act.
The
schoolchildren were overjoyed by Diefenbaker's decision and wrote thank-you
letters.
"I
think you are doing a very good thing for the horses on Sable Island,"
wrote one child named Paul.
"Instead of the ponies being skinny they will
be fat and instead of going to the glue factory they will be as free as the
wind."
Since
then, the horses have lived without human interference.
Should horses remain on Sable Island?
Martin
Willison, a conservation biologist and the president of the Nova Scotia chapter
of the Canadian
Parks and Wilderness Society, said the horses on Sable Island are controversial in some circles because they're not native to the island.
"The
usual rule in maintaining the native biodiversity of islands is to remove alien
species and this is a challenge for Parks Canada because Parks Canada is
supposed to remove alien species from its national parks," he said.
"The
question is, how do we define these horses? Because they've been there for
hundreds of years. So are they alien and should they be removed? Or are they
native and should be maintained and left alone to go on in a normal manner?"
McLoughlin
said the key issue is that without the horses, Sable Island would not exist as
it does today.
"They're
the only terrestrial mammal and a large mammal at that, a grazer. Undoubtedly
it's had an effect on how the island is set up. For good or for bad, the horses
aren't going to go anywhere," he said.
"There's
a questions there that Nova Scotians and Canadians have to ask themselves and
it is: do they want the Sable Island horse? And I think overwhelmingly they
would say, 'Yes.' This is a breed that is
valuable, it's important to the
ecosystem as it exists right now."
The island
is so remote, so difficult to visits, which is perhaps the best protection of
all.
