Week 11 Blog #3

In the article “Wild Horses Move From Threatened to Critical,” by the Equine Post, it talks about the numbers of wild horses starting to diminish. The government has placed wild horses in national parks in order to keep their numbers up, but they keep going down. The next level after critical is extinction, which is what the program has been working against for a long time. They are now starting breeding programs to make new herds of horses so that if there is an epidemic and they have to kill of some of the herds they will still have descendents of the original wild horses. The author believes that it is horrible with how low the wild horses population numbers are going down. They think that it is a good idea but a little weird about starting to breed a new outside herd in case a catastrophe occurs. This defeats the purpose of the original wild horses because it brings in human contact and they are pretty much making hybrids. Although, it is good because the wild horses will still be around. It is really scary to think of there being a huge catastrophe or spread of disease where they’d have to kill off a herd that is already diminishing. On the east coast it doesn’t seem like there’s a huge problem with the wild horses as there is on the west coast or in the Midwest. It’s hard to believe that farmers over here are talking about there being huge numbers of mustangs that are ruining the land and eating a lot of the range up, yet if there are so many why are they in danger of going extinct. This isn’t helped by horse slaughter either because this makes them disappear even more. How are these animals going extinct when they apparently are having a hard time controlling the population?

Article used: http://www.equinepost.com/resources/articles.asp?ID=55