It’s not a term used loosely very much – especially around Nov. 11 – but retired rancher and wild horse aficionado Darrell Glover uses it freely to describe what he sees the provincial government doing to wild horses.
“It’s equine genocide,” he said in an interview with The Eagle this week.
Glover is president of the Help Alberta Wildies Society and he’s beating the drum in support of wild horses and in opposition to what he says are provincial plans to once again go out into the range and cull or sterilize wild horses in an attempt to bring their numbers down to a pre-determined threshold population.
The government of Alberta ordered a cull in 2014, when they said they were destroying range land. Glover is fighting them again, after the province put forth a plan to manage the animal's population.
“No compelling scientific evidence has ever been produced to substantiate their damage claims," Glover said. "In fact, horses should be characterized as native wildlife and protected."
Glover’s argument is that wild horses can serve a range of beneficial ecological functions and are genetically equivalent to the horses that existed in Alberta just a few thousand years ago, a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.
“When determining whether a species is native or not, typically several criteria are used. When these are applied to Alberta’s wild horses, there is no question that they should be considered wild and a part of Canada’s natural wildlife heritage,” he said from his ranch north of Olds.
Glover spends a lot of time roaming the countryside looking for the horses, where he sometimes films them with his drone, then posts video to his website.
The province's website records 1,478 wild horses on Alberta land in 2024, but Glover believes the real number is much lower.
He lists off a number of claims made by the province in past years as reasons for previous culls: no natural predators; they ere all full of EIA, (equine infectious anemia); the numbers were skyrocketing, and, the horses are damaging the landscape.
“We've proved all those claims wrong," Glover said.
Glover is also part of the Feral Horse Advisory Committee, and says he agreed to a certain population cap but didn't agree to the low threshold limits for each equine zone.
He also questions the province’s population estimates.
Cochranite Norene Procter has been fighting to protect wild horses for 40 years. She breaks down on the phone trying to describe her feelings and her struggles with the provincial government.
“Some of these government people; it just boggles my mind, boggles my mind,” she said.
Procter sends emails to government and tries to set up meetings – so far to no avail.
She also puts on her reflective vest and emergency flashers on her car whenever she sees wild horses west of Cochrane. She stops to warn motorists before calling the Stoney Nakota to see if they can come and help move the horses to safety.
“The government is saying these horses are causing damage to the land, which is completely false," she said. "And if they talk about any kind of contraception, what that does is it terrifies and breaks up families. And that also could well lead to extinction."
While the government is not specifically using the word “cull” at this time, there is mistrust in the community of wild horse advocates.
The provincial government is currently considering taking action to manage wild horse numbers in some parts of the province where the feral animals have flourished past set thresholds enacted last year.
“In areas like the Elbow and Clearwater equine zones, where horse populations have exceeded the management thresholds set in the Feral Horse Management Framework, we’re looking at options like adoption and contraception,” said Alexandru Cioban, an Alberta Forestry and Parks spokesperson in a written statement to the Albertan.
The Framework enacted in 2023 seeks to integrate the free-roaming horses into a landscape-scale approach of managing natural resources, including forage.
It establishes different population thresholds for each of the province’s six equine management zones based on rangeland science, landscape ecology, feral horse population data and adaptive management.
According to the framework, a population cap is enacted when minimum horse numbers in the Elbow zone west of Calgary hits 100 and in the Clearwater zone west of Rocky Mountain House hits 150.
During a Jan. 19, 2024 aerial survey, observers counted 111 horses in the Elbow zone and during a Feb. 14 to 16th, 2024 aerial survey of the Clearwater zone counted 156.
“To be clear, there is no cull of Alberta feral horses planned, and minimum counts conducted across the years have shown horse populations more than doubled in the last decade – from just barely over 700 in 2015, to nearly 1,500 today,” Cioban said.
Adoption and contraception reflects the guidelines from the Feral Horse Advisory Committee, which includes input and support from advocacy groups, grazing organizations, wildlife groups, and academics.
Besides Glover, criticism of the framework has also come from non-framework advisory members.
In late October, Zoocheck launched a letter writing campaign to Alberta's premier and MLAs “to stop the cruel, misguided, wasteful and unnecessary wild horse removals.”
The organization is a charity that promotes and protects the interests and well-being of wild animals.
Under Alberta’s legislation, the free-roaming horses are considered feral not wild.
Zoocheck’s campaign asks people to write their MLAs asking for the feral horses to be recategorized as naturalized wildlife and "given protection from further persecution."
At the same time, Zoocheck released a new peer-reviewed report by Wayne McCrory.
The registered professional biologist in B.C. disputes the percentage of range damage attributed to the horses and says population control measures are unwarranted.
The last time the province enacted management actions was in 2014 when it partnered with the Olds-area based Wild Horses of Alberta Society (WHOAS), after signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to pilot initiatives that could be important for a long-term strategy for the management of feral horses.
For the five-year duration of the MOU (2014-2019), two separate projects were established: an adoption project and a contraception project.
In 2015, WHOAS said 48 feral horses were captured with 39 going to WHOAS and the rest going to private buyers.
Once WHOAS rescues a feral horse, the organization is not allowed by government regulations to relocate the horse back onto public lands. WHOAS then begins the gentling process to get them ready for adoption.
Between 2015 and 2017 a total of 87 mares were vaccinated with an initial dose of the contraception Zona-Stat Porcine Zonaof Pellucida (PZP) and 17 received a booster shot, according to the feral horse framework. Five of the 17 received a third dose as well.
-With files from The Albertan.
