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Animal Welfare Overseas
- 1. Brazil Battles Blood Sport (Farra do Boi)
- 2. Fighting to End Horse Slaughter in France
- 3. Educating India - Ghandi's School of Animal Welfare
- 4. Fighting to Survive in Sri Lanka
- 5. Saving the Wild Horses of the Bahamas
- 6. India Takes Sterilization to the Streets
- 7. Spay Day in Sayulita, Mexico
Saving the Wild Horses of the Bahamas
Milanne Rehor, founder, Abaco Wild Horse Fund
For years, the wild horses of Abaco were thought to be a myth, animals about whom many stories were told but which were extinct. Actually, seven wild horses of Abaco still are clinging to a precarious existence in a preserve in the pine forests of Abaco. Abaco is the northernmost of the Bahama Islands and is one of only four islands that support the Caribbean pines and that have their own fresh water.
Research into the horses' history both past and recent began in 1992. Based on three separate DNA analyses, the horses are internationally accepted as a subgroup of the now-rare Spanish Colonial breed. They are acknowledged to be critically endangered and likely are the rarest breed of horse on the planet.
The horses were brought to Abaco from Cuba in the late 1800s to drag logs when the forests were clear cut. When tractors came into general use, the horses were abandoned. Christopher Columbus had developed two horse farms in Cuba. The DNA work shows that the Abaco horses are indeed Spanish, but they in no way look like the horses now in Cuba, which have been mixed with other breeds and have no available DNA data. The Abaco horses are phenotypically just about perfect replicas of the original Spanish colonial horse.
As of September 2009, there are three mares and four stallions.
The steely determination bred into them enabled them to adapt to a harsh environment that turned out to be an equine paradise of shady pine forests filled with enough forage and fresh water to provide optimum health.
Unfortunately, with the building of the Abaco Highway in the 1960s, the now easy-to-reach paradise was destroyed, and the impact of humans has weighed heavily on the horses ever since. A tragedy involving a blameless horse and a child resulted in the slaughter of a herd estimated to have been between 150 and 200.
Three horses were brought out of captivity and placed on a newly developed farm located in the middle of a second-growth forest. One pinto stallion, a bay mare and her filly resulted in 30-35 head when they were roughly counted in 1992. The horses 'commuted' between the farm and forest.
When 1999's Hurricane Floyd drove the horses from the forest to live full-time on the farm, the horses once again declined. Several were saved from certain death when roofing nails were removed from their feet after the storm. Unwilling to move from the over-rich grass once planted for cattle, the horses entered a vicious cycle: obesity combined with the rich feed discouraged movement, resulting in hoof infections that killed several horses. Unable to move much because of the pain in their hooves, they grew even fatter.
Simple intervention with penicillin delivered by blow pipe saved a number of them, but the presence of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides added to the deadly environment. The horses stopped reproducing.
In 2002, the remaining horses were granted a 3,800-acre government preserve and were moved back to their ancestral home. Pre-existing conditions took several more lives. Though the horses limped into the preserve, from that day to this there has not been one case of lameness other than two incidents of minor bruising which cleared up within days.
In the summer of 2007, three of the mares appeared to be pregnant, one seemingly within weeks of foaling. Sadly, all three reabsorbed.
In September 2009, permission was granted to bring in an equine reproduction expert. Her arrival is eagerly anticipated.
Arkwild, Inc. a 501(c)3 in the U.S. (incorporated in 1999) works with the Wild Horses Of Abaco Preservation Society (WHOA), a Bahamian non-profit organization, to raise funds for the ongoing maintenance and improvement of the preserve. There are only two paid workers; board members and the project director are volunteers. The project director started work to save the horses in 1992 and is on the job 24/7.
It is the goal of both organizations to bring the herd up to viable numbers once again and to maintain the horses in as free an environment as possible. This offers a unique opportunity to interact with horses that are free of human dominance issues. The horses have no parasites, no diseases.
Please help us by learning more about the horses at our Web site, Arkwild.org or visiting us on Facebook (Arkwild, Inc.) and on You Tube (Arkwild). We live on donations and have never received any government funding. Please help us preserve these unique, pristine genetic time capsules -- who also happen to be simply wonderful horses. Extinction is not an option.
Arkwild.org
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