The National Park Service was given responsibility for the new seashore, and what is now called the US Fish and Wildlife Service manages the wildlife refuge. Assateague Island stretches for 36 miles from Sinepuxent Bay in the north to Chincoteague Bay in the south; about 9 miles are in Virginia and 27 miles are in Maryland. Until , "problem horses" that bothered humans on the National Park Service side of the fence were transferred to the US Fish and Wildlife side. The genetics of the herd have been mixed.
The herds on either side of that fence are managed by different techniques, based on the separate management objectives of the two Federal bureaucracies. The Chincoteague roundup reduces the population of the herd on the Virginia side of Assateague Island each year to about adult ponies, the authorized limit in the Fish and Wildlife Service permit. In , there were 22 stallions and mares. Th Maryland ponies are not involved in the annual swim or auction of foals on Chincoteague.
In , there were 21 stallions and 61 mares roaming on the Maryland side of the fence. The National Park Service maintains the population of the herd in Maryland below animals by use of contraception. No roundups are required in Maryland; population levels are maintained by non-capture techniques.
Birth control is accomplished by shooting mares with darts loaded with a vaccine that prevents pregnancy, but does not alter hormones and thus does not affect herd dynamics.
A plant pathogen common in the island marshes is a threat to the health of the fillies and mares, but for unknown reasons not the stallions. Pythium insidiosum is an oomycete, equivalent to a water mold or fungus. Most horses seem unaffected by it, but between it killed eight of them from what locals called "swamp cancer. To minimize the infections, barbed wire fences were replaced. The fences protected shoreline vegetation from overgrazing and accelerated shoreline erosion, but the barbs created small wounds in the hide of horses who pushed though in order to eat the marsh grass " right down to very, very small stubble.
The Chincoteague herd has been vaccinated against the pathogen, boosting the immune system to block the growth of its filaments inside the horses' bodies. Starting in , a booster shot was added during the Spring Roundup.
Humans are also at risk of being infected. Fewer Saltwater Cowboys were used to round up the ponies for health checks and to vaccinate the foals born over the winter, and the event was closed to the public.
There was less help for local veterinarian doing the innoculations. Researchers stayed away because the influenza virus threatened humans as Pythium insidiosum threatened the ponies. The Pony Swim was cancelled the first time since World War and the pony sale was scheduled as an online event. Bidders could see profiles for each pony, and had a week to bid. Maintaining the horse herds could accelerate the impacts of sea level rise on Assateague Island.
The National Park Service has concluded: This build up of decaying vegetation is thought to be vital if salt marsh root systems are to keep pace with rising sea-levels. There is the potential for another hurricane to wipe out the horse herd, perhaps even more thoroughly that the Ash Wednesday storm in Water rose eight feet within an hour in a "mini-tsunami" amd drowned 28 of the 49 wild horses on Cedar Island. Some carcasses washed up on the Core Banks of Cape Lookout National Seashore; others just disappeared into the waters of the sound or were carried into the Atlantic Ocean.
Each horse had an individual name associated with an island resident, and biologists had anticipated the herd would be the source for restocking other more-exposed islands if a hurricane wiped out their wild horse populations.
After Hurricane Dorian passed, local residents assumed that the 20 or so wild "sea cows" that had also roamed Cedar Island were drowning victims as well. However, a month after the storm, three cows were discovered at Cape Lookout. The National Park Service did not allow the non-native animals to stay. The Federal agency rounded up the cows and transported them back across Pamlico Sound via barge to their range of 1, acres of private land on Cedar Island.
Public support for the horse herds has forced the Federal agencies to modify their management plans to include preservation of the horse herds.
THe National Park Service also failed in its attempt to remove feral horses from Cumberland Island, after that island off the Georgia coast became a "national seashore" in The first horses on the island may have been introduced by the Spanish in the 's. When the national seashore was designated, horses maintained as free ranging livestock after World War II had become wild. They were roaming freely, with no one providing food, medicine, or other care.
In the 's, the National Park Service concluded that the environmental damage caused by grazing and trampling should be ended by limiting the size of the herd to horses, and removing the rest. Strong public objections blocked implementation of the plan.
The Federal agency tried again in to remove the herd, but once again discovered that it was not politically feasible. The Pony Auction not only provides a source of revenue for the fire company, but it also serves to trim the herd's numbers.
To retain the permit to graze on the refuge, the herd must not exceed horses. Each year thousands of people flock to Chincoteague Island to watch the Pony Penning and enjoy the Firemen's Carnival. For many of them, the trek to the shores of Assateague Channel on the last Wednesday and Thursday of July has become an annual event, an opportunity to participate in a tradition older than the country itself.
Did you know that the Saltwater Cowboys round up the Wild Ponies on Assateague at two other times of the year in addition to July? The first roundup is April, and the last roundup is in October. The Wild Ponies are rounded up into corrals on Assateague Island for an overall health check by a Veterinarian. Click here to learn more about the Spring and Fall Pony Round-ups. The Chincoteague Pony became an official registered breed in The average height of a Chincoteague Pony is between 12 and 13 hands any horse that stands less than 14 hands is considered a Pony.
Chincoteague Ponies are stocky, with short legs, thick manes, and large, round bellies. Assateague Island is a harsh environment for the Ponies and their diet is limited. The Ponies have adapted to the limited diet over the hundreds of years they have lived on Assateague. The Ponies primarily eat the salt water cord grass that grows in the marshes on Assateague Island.
They eat almost all day just to get enough nutrition from this diet to sustain themselves. The salt content of the cord grass is very high. To compensate for all the salt in the cord grass they drink twice as much water as a normal horse.
This is why their bellies appear so bloated. The wild ponies on Assateague Island congregate in small groups, called "bands".
Each band has one dominate stallion and the rest are mares that the stallion breeds with. The number of mares a particular stallion has in his band is dependent upon how dominate the stallion is. The stronger the stallion the more mares he is able to win when fighting other stallions on the Island. The dominate stallion will kick his male offspring out of the band after a couple of years, once the colt has reached sexual maturity.
Young bachelor males tend to form their own small band, until they become big and strong enough to begin fighting for and winning mares from other stallions. Likewise, female offspring are eventually chased off by their mother to prevent inbreeding. The famous Saltwater Cowboys round up the Chincoteague ponies on Assateague Island and walk them down the beach at sunrise. Photo: Bonnie U. This Wednesday marks the 90th annual pony swim and auction on Chincoteague Island, Virginia.
While this event has been celebrated annually since , its origins can be traced back to at least the early s. In , a spectator described the event:. The rustic splendor, the crowds, and wild festivity of the Assateague horse-pennings, scarcely retain a shadow of their ancient glory. The multitudes of both sexes that formerly attended those occasions of festal mirth, were astonishing. The adjoining islands were literally emptied of their simple and frolic loving inhabitants, and the peninsula itself contributed to swell the crowd, for fifty miles above and below the point of meeting.
All the beauty and fashion of a certain order of the female population, who had funds, or favorites to command a passage, were sure to be there. The modern celebration has boasted attendance of 50, in some years, with visitors coming from all over the United States and Canada and even further afield.
It was made into a movie in and today is required reading in many schools in the USA. Chincoteague ponies during the annual pony penning and swim from Assateague. Grandpa explained that the horses swam ashore from a wrecked Spanish galleon and it was the Native Americans who discovered them first.
She had heard that these wild horses that call Assateague their home were descended from those that swam ashore from a wrecked Spanish galleon centuries ago. On September 5, , the gun Spanish warship, La Galga , drove ashore in shallow water at Assateague, diverted by a hurricane from her intended course from Havana, Cuba, to Spain. The ship did not sink and no-one died on board. However, it took three days for everyone to gain the shore by swimming, rafts, and Native American canoes. Several of the Spaniards drowned in the surf with bags of money tied to their belts.
Several others were not strong enough to swim the short distance. Immediately after the Spaniards left, the locals began salvaging and the dismantling the ship. By late October, La Galga had been cut to the water line but she still held the valuable cargo of mahogany planks in her lower hold. In early November, a north-east storm wrenched the gun deck loose, allowing the mahogany to wash ashore. Sand immediately filled in the hull and covered what was left.
This event would be remembered by succeeding generations and the sudden appearance of small horses on the island were linked to this shipwreck.
The people of neighboring Chincoteague handed down the oral tradition of the Spanish shipwreck for centuries. But that would change after Misty of Chincoteague became so popular.
The federal government decided that the people of Chincoteague were being misled by this legend so in the National Park Service historian published its research on the subject, hoping to settle the issue. When Marguerite Henry heard the legend first hand, she was told that the Spanish shipwreck occurred in the 16th century, otherwise characterized as the s, and that the horses were already on Assateague when the English settlers arrived in the middle of the 17th century.
Native Americans were the only inhabitants in the area in the s so there was no-one to make official record of this alleged event. What explains the difference between fact and fiction is the likely confusion over the method of referencing centuries. One more mistake, repeated by others, puts you back in the s.
The National Park Service historian proved that there were no horses on Assateague when the English colonists arrived in the middle of the s. He also discovered that horses were pastured on Assateague in the late s. He concluded that these horses must have been the source of the present wild horses and failed to make any possible connection to La Galga, which he mentioned in his report.
His research stopped there. While it is true that the farmers on the mainland who owned Assateague Island used Assateague to pasture their horses and cattle, the owners kept a tight eye on their livestock. When owners died, the court would order an inventory of their possessions which included their Assateague horses and cattle.
These records have survived the centuries in the neighboring county courthouses. These records were never consulted by the National Park Service. While some people on the mainland came to believe that the present wild herds merely descended from horses brought over to Assateague in the late s, it is an illogical premise as the horses had value and would not be abandoned.
In fact, there is record of a herdsman living on the island in , proof that their cattle and horses were well tended.
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