Image Credit: Contributed/Mel Rothenburger

By Mel Rothenburger

Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: Shooting of wild horses is the latest sad chapter in their story

Mar 25, 2023 | 6:39 AM

WILD HORSES, to many people, represent freedom. To others, they mean trouble.

The mysterious shooting of 17 feral horses north of Walhachin was a terrible act that re-ignites the debate between wild horse lovers and haters.

Both the Skeetchestn Indian Band and the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council have condemned the slaughter. While a news release from Skeetchestn noted that the shootings didn’t happen on Band land, a herd of mustangs has lived in the general area for decades. Estimates of their numbers range to a hundred or more.

I first learned about them years ago when I went for a ride with then-Skeetchestn Chief Ron Ignace in the hills above the reserve. We stopped to give our horses a rest and, as we sat looking down on the Deadman Valley, he told me about the wild horses.

I later got to know more about them when a Kamloops Daily News story on a roundup of some of the horses went viral.

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Wild horses are no longer “culled” to reduce the herds but a bunch were captured by a contractor hired by the B.C. Ministry of Natural Resource Operations in 2011 and put up for auction at the Kamloops stock yards.

The government began such roundups on Crown land in 2006, using portable corrals and trip gates. Knowing that so-called “kill buyers” would be on the lookout at the auction for cheap horses (as little as $100 each) to send to slaughter for meat export, an animal welfare group stepped in.

The story of the condemned horses spread. Boosted by social media, it went all the way to the upper levels of the provincial government. A school in the Lower Mainland even held a writing contest on saving the horses.

Unfortunately, five of the 11 captured mustangs were quickly sold at auction, almost certainly for meat.

The welfare group, Critteraid, managed to convince the province to let them have a stallion and two pregnant mares. The stallion — who was named Atticus (after the character in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird) — was gelded, the mares successfully foaled, and all were trained for adoption.

There are wild horse herds all over B.C. and elsewhere in North America. A herd has roamed the area north of the South Thompson River near Kamloops and has often been spotted close to East Shuswap Road. There are other wild herds in the Chilcotin and elsewhere.

They’re revered by those who love animals and the thought of horses galloping free across the grasslands unrestrained by humankind.

But there’s another side to it. Many insist the wild horses overgraze land needed for domesticated horses and cattle. They say that while horse lovers talk about them being part of the ecosystem, they actually degrade it because their teeth are designed to crop grass short to the ground, allowing weeds to move in.

They claim it’s more humane to capture and sell or kill them than to leave them to starve on overgrazed land but the fate of horses that go to slaughter is heartbreaking. Because they’re prey animals, they easily panic in unfriendly surroundings and are dragged into kill pens and shot in the head with bolt guns.

Considering all that horses do for us, we treat them most cruelly. Whoever killed the 17 wild horses north of Walhachin went to great effort to do it. Investigators say the horses were in two groups, one with six and one with 11, and a considerable distance from each other.

In its statement last week, the Tribal Council emphasized the importance of the feral herd. “Our Secwèpemc traditional stories and laws teach us how the horse is a sacred animal, bringing many teachings to our people with healing, and symbolizes a powerful entity of strength and freedom. Secwèpemc people have a connection with all living beings and have been taught that all animals should be treated with utmost dignity and respect.”

It’s significant that the Skeetchestn Band’s own comments referred to the “loss of wildlife.” Defenders of wild horses argue they should be classified as wildlife rather than livestock. It’s partly a practical issue: laws around the protection of wildlife are stricter than they are for the treatment of livestock.

If whoever shot the 17 horses is caught, they’ll likely only be subject to fines under Cruelty to Animals legislation. It’s not enough.

The origin of the Deadman Valley herd is fuzzy. Some of the horses may have once been domesticated and then lost or abandoned by their owners at some point. Another theory is that they’re descended from wild populations that lived around here even before colonization.

That’s possible, since the first horses were brought to North America by Spanish conquistadors in the late 1400s.

Whatever their origin, the Deadman Valley horses deserve to be left alone to continue roaming free.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, alternate TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.