what to do with wild horses in the navajo nation

The Navajo Nation has a wild horse problem

The population is exploding, but the tribe doesn't have funding to manage information technology.

 

Upwardly to xl,000 wild horses wander the Navajo Nation, roaming across 27,000 miles of deep canyons, rugged hills and huge mountains, according to aerial estimates from the Agency of Indian Affairs. In just 5 years, the population is expected to double. Already the feral horses compete with domestic animals, sheep or cattle, and wild fauna for water and sparse vegetation. Yet a Navajo Nation oversight committee recently denied an $800,000 funding request from the tribe's Fish and Wild fauna Department to help reduce the horse population, leaving the nation with few alternatives.

"Right at present, in that location is no programme," Leo Watchman, Navajo Nation Agriculture Department director, told me recently. The department denied the asking, in role, considering the nation's other priorities, including health intendance and education, take precedent. "You need to put dollars forwards to gain management," Watchman said, "but the issue will come again."

Navajo equus caballus breakers tame a mustang at La Tinaja in Ramah, New Mexico.

Feral horses take become a trouble not only among the Navajo but likewise among other tribal officials managing reservation lands throughout the West. The Colville and Yakama tribes in Washington, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon and the Shoshone-Bannock in Idaho accept all been plagued by out-of-control equus caballus populations. The trouble presents a unique quandary for tribes: What do you do with a creature that has been an integral role of your civilization, but has wreaked havoc on land, water, traditional foods and wildlife?

The Navajo Nation has long grappled with how all-time to control feral and domestic horses abased by owners unable to care for them. In 2013, then-Navajo President Ben Shelly publicly supported a horse slaughter functioning in Roswell, New Mexico. Shelly approved $ane.iv million to allow Chapter Houses, a class of local government on the Navajo Nation, to inspect and procedure the horses for selling. Horses obtained in tribal roundups since around 2011 accept either been sold to buyers for resale, adoption or slaughter in processing plants in Canada or Mexico, which consign the meat to consumer markets in Europe and Asia.

Because tribes are sovereign nations, their management differs from the way the U.South. government manages feral equus caballus populations. The Agency of Land Management, which oversees the lxx,000 wild horses and burros on public lands in the West, promotes adoption. According to the bureau, each animal that goes unadopted can cost almost $l,000 in care. The U.Southward. authorities has prohibited sending feral horses to slaughter since 1971, with the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming and Burros Act. The act, however, allows the BLM to euthanize sick or dangerous horses.

More than 38,000 wild horses live on the Navajo Nation.

Tribal officials say the feral equus caballus population burgeoned when the last U.S. horse slaughterhouses closed in 2007. U.S. Court of Appeals in the Fifth and 7th Circuits upheld country laws in Texas and Illinois prohibiting auction or possession of horsemeat and horse slaughter. Congress likewise pulled funding for meat processing prohibiting new plants from opening and wild horses became devalued. Simultaneously, the U.S. began hitting an economic downturn, hay prices were at an all-time high and many, unable to care for them, let their horses become.

In March, Gloria Tom, Navajo Fish and Wildlife Department director, broached the idea of a equus caballus hunt, telling The Navajo Times "previous attempts to trap, round upwardly, or allow horses to be adopted had not made a large enough touch on." But that proposal was quashed after an outcry from horse enthusiasts and advocacy organizations, who met with the tribal Wildlife Department in May to promote a more humane way of managing herds. The Salt River Wild Horse Management Group and other groups argued for the utilise of darts containing a contraceptive called porcine zona pellucida, or PZP. Citing 30 years of research and studies done on urban deer populations, the group says that the feral horses become infertile when PZP is injected yearly for five years.

Recently, on an early September afternoon I met with Leland Grass of Diné for Wild Horses. Near the Navajo National Monument, about half-hour from Kayenta, Arizona, his habitation is abutted by a corral that contains two horses from the wild. Grass, part of the strong song opposition to the horse roundup and slaughter-sale in 2013, supports more local control and direction of feral bands through Chapter Houses, where officials could maintain bands and move stallions before mating. He also works to brainwash the Diné, or Navajo people, whom take long included horses as part of their creation stories. "Our people don't like roundups considering that's not our fashion," Grass said. "If you destroy something that's living, it'southward going to grow back again and come back stronger."

Leland Grass of Diné for Wild Horses stands by his corral near his home a few miles from the Navajo National Monument. Grass advocates for more than education and local Chapter Business firm management for feral horses.

Kim Baca

Some Chapter Houses take held local roundups, borrowing temporary pens and other equipment from the Navajo Agronomics Department to trap horses or unclaimed livestock. They catch the animals at area watering holes and  call the department to take them removed. The Tiis Tsoh Sikaad, or Burnham Chapter, in Northwest New Mexico is one local government taking accuse by working with the BIA on a fencing project to keep livestock and feral horses from roaming free.

Whatever the solution — roundup, nascence control, horse hunt or adoption — it volition cost money. The result, Watchman said, will be discussed again during a natural resource briefing on the reservation in November.

Kim Baca is a freelance journalist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She's covered  agriculture, environmental, educational and Native American issues for more than two decades.

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Source: https://www.hcn.org/issues/49.20/tribal-affairs-what-will-navajo-nation-do-about-its-wild-horse-problem

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