EDMONTON—How long does an animal live and reproduce in the wild before it can be termed wild?
This question is being debated in Alberta, where an organization dedicated to the conservation and humane treatment of the province’s free-roaming horses wants the animals given a special designation.
“They are not truly wildlife in one point, but they are not livestock either,” says Bob Henderson, president of the Wild Horses of Alberta Society (WHOAS).
“They’re wild, free-roaming horses and we should recognize them and acknowledge them the way the United States has, as part of our heritage and part of our Western culture.”
WHOAS has sent DNA samples of the horses to the Equine Genetics Lab at the University of Texas to determine if the horses have developed into a distinct breed because of their isolation.
If the horses are afforded a distinct identification, Henderson believes WHOAS can lobby more effectively for better and more enforceable laws to properly protect the horses, which roam in the foothills west of Rocky Mountain House and Sundre, as well as south of there to the Alberta-U.S. border.
Alberta’s free-roaming horses tend to be viewed as pests as they represent no financial value, Henderson says. They have also been blamed for eating cattle graze, a claim he says is unproven, leading to the mentality that they should be eradicated.
