Kaimanawa Horses

The little bay stallion is wary of the crowd that has suddenly emerged from the convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles and is oohing and aahing and taking photos of him and his band of 10 mares and youngsters.

The wild Kaimanawa stallion eyes the humans suspiciously but stays put till his admirers come within about 20 metres, when he decides that is close enough and ushers his herd away from the potential threat.

The visitors, here on a Department of Conservation and Army-escorted field trip in July to the 65,000-hectare Waiouru Military Training Area in the Kaimanawa Ranges, get close enough to observe that the wild horses are in good condition, despite the freezing temperatures and challenging environment in which the horses live.

Even in mid-winter the horses are of good weight and their coats are surprisingly glossy – you’d be happy if your own domestic horses were looking this good in their paddock at this time of year.

The horses’ condition is in stark contrast to the skinny, under-nourished and miserable animals I saw huddled together in stockyards after the first big Kaimanawa wild horse muster in 1997, when more than a thousand horses were rounded up and sold – about two-thirds were slaughtered.

Their removal from the wild was highly controversial, pitting horse lovers against conservationists to the point where death threats were made. Now, a decade on, it appears the two sides have largely reached a compromise acceptable to both the conservationists and the horses’ supporters – or at least most of them.

DOC Conservation Analyst Bill Fleury, who has been working with the wild horses since 1987, says wild horses horses were first recorded in the Kaimanawas in1876, escapees from early European settlements, and they were joined by horses released from stations and the military over the next century or so.

He says genetic testing shows the wild horses are most closely related to thoroughbreds and standardbreds. The horses vary in appearance quite a lot between their separate bands of about 20 horses: in some groups many are small, dark brown or bay and appear similar to Exmoor ponies, while the larger size and distinctive white blazes of other bands suggest Clydesdale bloodlines. We also saw some small bands of large, grey horses.

Fleury says the wild horses are not a genetically distinct breed, though this is disputed by many Kaimanawa enthusiasts, who say more than a century of natural selection in this tough environment has produced a particular type of small, tough horse that constitutes a breed in its own right.

A special breed or not, by the 1970s the survival of the Kaimanawa wild horses was in doubt. Round-ups by the pet food industry and development of land led to the wild horse population dwindling to less than 200. It was feared they would become extinct, so in 1981 the horses were granted protected status under the Wildlife Act – the same protection granted to threatened native species such as kiwi and kakapo. Once protected, the horse population was growing by 17% a year, and by 1994-95 there were more than 1000 horses in the Kaimanawas.

The Department of Conservation became concerned about the impact the horses were having on the native vegetation, which includes the last remaining significant tussock grassland in the North Island and many rare native herbs, buttercups, forget-me-nots, daisies, sedges and other high altitude wetland plants – many of which are not found anywhere else.

Some are so rare they have not been seen for more than a century and may already be extinct. During a visit here in 1814 botanist William Colenso fell into an ice-covered hole and emerged clutching a small wetland plant. The plant was collected and named by the cold, wet botanist and was stored in the plant collection at Kew in England, where it remains to this day. No other specimens of this plant have ever been found.

Many of these plants are not spectacular, Fleury admits – their flowers are often tiny, the size of a nail head – but they are special and unique to this place, and if not protected could easily become extinct. This fragile ecosystem is also home to threatened native bird species such as the New Zealand falcon, pipits and fernbirds.

When horse numbers were high, threat to native wildlife was not the only danger - there was also a safety problem with horses straying on to the Desert Road, causing at least three serious accidents.

To be fair to the horses, they were far from the only threat to the natural environment. Fire has radically altered the vegetation for the last 600 years, causing the tussocklands to spread into areas where forest was previously dominant.

The land was grazed by cattle and sheep as recently as 20 years ago, and hares, possums, pigs, deer and rabbits have also taken their toll. Introduced plant pests such as Pinus contorta are also a problem.

Muddy tyre tracks and unexploded bombs in an area known as “Zone 20” show that military activity has also left its mark, though recently the Army has been spending a million dollars a year on pest control and has a sustainability plan to ensure it minimises environmental damage.

The conservationists’ original solution to the threat posed by the horses to native plant life was to shoot the horses from helicopters. However, what was seen by DOC as an introduced pest to be eradicated was viewed in a more romantic light by horse fans and many of the wider community, and there was a public outcry over DOC’s plans.

Eventually a compromise was proposed under the Kaimanawa Wild Horses Plan, drawn up with input from DOC, Forest & Bird, SPCA, the Army and horse protection groups. It was agreed that the horses would be removed from the northern two-thirds of their range, where the most fragile plants and ecosystems were located, and a herd of 500 horses would be maintained in the southern part of the range.

To keep the population at 500, rather than shooting the horses, they would be mustered by helicopter each year and the excess horses would be re-homed.

The large number of horses taken out in the first muster proved problematic: it was nearly impossible to find homes for more than a thousand horses, and there was little demand for the older horses, so hundreds were slaughtered.

Kaimanawa Wild Horse Preservation Society President Sharon Brown says that sometimes “fuzzy feelings turned to custard” when well-meaning but ill-equipped people took on the challenge of adopting wild horses, but found it was more than they could realistically cope with.

Subsequent musters have seen improvements and now an average of 100 horses a year are . This year it was necessary to remove154 horses to bring wild numbers down to 500, and nearly all found new homes.

Brown says that as more Kaimanawa horses are excelling in a variety of horse disciplines – particularly pony club, showing, trekking, competitive trail riding and Riding for the Disabled – they are easier to re-home. There are now far more Kaimanawa horses living in domesticity than there are remaining in the wild.

Brown, who owns 17 Kaimanawa horses herself, says their placid temperament, strength and stamina means they are now widely sought after by people looking for reliable and versatile horses, particularly for children.

The preservation society is relatively happy with the herd limit of 500, but other break-away groups of horse supporters are less content with the status quo. Wild Horses of Aotearoa is seeking a return to protected status for the horses, while the Kaimanawa Wild Horse Welfare Trust wants contraceptive programmes to replace the annual musters as the main method of controlling the population.

Fleury says the natural vegetation is showing improvement since horse numbers have been reduced. As growth rates are slow in this cold, high altitude environment, it is hard to tell how successful the recovery has been. Exclosure plots, fenced off so researchers can monitor the difference between grazed and ungrazed sites, are showing some change in density of native vegetation, but any improvements are hardly dramatic to the untrained eye.

Shrublands – largely kanuka and manuka – are reappearing on the steep slopes, and it is hoped they will eventually support the regrowth of the original forest species: red, silver and mountain beech, mountain cedar, Hall’s totara and pink pine.

However the promised contraceptive trials have been notably unsuccessful. To deliver an effective contraceptive dose, it would be necessary to dose the mares up to three times over a period of several weeks every year, which proved practically impossible.

Experiments in the United States demonstrate that attempting to geld or vasectomise all the colts in a wild herd is also unsuccessful in controlling fertility. They found it was virtually impossible to capture and de-sex every single male horse. If even just a few males avoid the programme, they can still do the job of impregnating all the mares. They just got some very busy and happy stallions. As Fleury says “the mares showed a surprising lack of fidelity.”

So until US researchers come up with a better solution to the contraception dilemma, the yearly Kaimanawa horse musters will continue.

Article and photographs by Helen Bain.

This page was updated on 26 November, 2007