On a narrow crescent of land off the coast of Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of horses run free, galloping along the rolling dunes, their chestnut coats standing out against the white sands and rich blues of the ocean.
After a particularly hard winter, nearly 150 of these horses have died, raising questions about the future of the famed and deeply controversial feral herd of Sable Island.
Parks Canada said this week that a recent survey of the island, a windswept strip hundreds of miles off the coast, found that nearly a quarter of the herd had succumbed to harsh winter conditions over the past year – a loss more than double the yearly average.
Sable Island, measuring only 12 square miles (31 sq km), has long been beloved in the Canadian imagination for its rugged beauty and treacherous conditions. Shifting sandbars, squalls, thick fog and strong currents have wrecked more than 350 ships since the late 1500s.
Central to the image are the island’s feral horses. Over the years, their story has been embroidered with myths, including that they were the survivors of shipwrecks.
The truth is more prosaic, experts say: the horses, seized from Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia, were deposited on the island in the 1700s by a Boston merchant, along with pigs, sheep and cattle. Against all odds, the horses outlasted them all, surviving on grasses and a handful of freshwater ponds.
Over centuries, they have eked out a tenuous survival, with the population slowly growing over the last few decades. Their isolation means they have diverged genetically from other populations and the herd has had little human interaction, making them tantalizing subjects for researchers.
In the 1950s, the Canadian government planned to ship the horses to work in coalmines or for slaughter. A well-orchestrated public campaign, in which children were encouraged to write letters to the prime minister, was a “pivotal moment” in pushing the horses to the forefront of the public’s attention, said Dan Kehler, a Sable Island ecologist with Parks Canada. The plan worked, and the prime minister, John Diefenbaker, amended the Canada Shipping Act, granting the horses full protection.
Each year, the Sable Island Institute uses volunteers to tally dead horses over a two-week period, sending the data to Parks Canada.
The recent die-off is partly attributed to the unforgiving nature of life on the island. Still, the population has surged from 250 horses in 1961 to a record 591 horses last year.
“We’ve had a half a dozen or so drops and resets in the population over the years and some of those are severe. But it is a reason to pay close attention to what might happen over the next few years to see if this is part of a trend,” said Kehler. “Will the population continue to increase or will it eventually settle out at carrying capacity?”
Biologists have grown increasingly concerned that the horses are destroying the rare biodiversity of the island.
“These are farm animals that are basically keeping the island in a highly degraded state. From an animal welfare perspective, they are outside their suitable habitat and suffering terribly. A high percentage of them die every year. They suffer from various diseases or lack of access to shelter, to clean, fresh drinking water to proper, food,” said Ian Jones, a professor of biology at Newfoundland’s Memorial University. “It’s a population of abandoned animals that are under extreme stress.”
The romantic notion of the horses, which figure prominently in literature, film and television, have swayed the public to maintain the status quo, he said.
“We need to restore remote islands’ precious biodiversity … the scientific part is a no-brainer,” he said. “And that matters, because more unique life forms have gone extinct on islands in recorded history than anywhere else.”
Jones said there was “enormous excitement” among biologists when Parks Canada acquired the island, with many believing the park service’s mandate to control invasive species meant the horses would finally be removed.
“Very soon after the park announcement was made, it became clear a different group of people had the ear of Parks Canada. And through some pretzel-like logic, Parks Canada has decided the horses will stay,” he said.
Kehler said Parks Canada considers the horses to be a “naturalized” species.
“They decided the horses have been there long enough, they were part of the ecosystem and that they would be treated as wildlife just like any other species under the, Canada’s national parks act,” he said. “That they’ve thrived in the absence of human involvement suggests that they are adapted to the environment. And so there comes a point for any species where you have to decide, well, how long has it been here? How long is enough? Ultimately comes down to values. It’s not necessarily a scientific question.”
Jones is quick to point out he and his wife are horse lovers and own a Shetland pony. “Horses and humans have a long history of interaction with one another. They’re obviously very charismatic and seem to be able to relate to humans and humans to them,” he said.
“But in Nova Scotia, there are these notions of ‘wild’ horses on Sable Island, which must be maintained at all costs. And despite all rational input, we’re leaving a mass of horses on a remote island that are just having a devastating impact.”
