Wild west comes to Waiouru
Wild horse management plan seeks sustainable population control
The muster of wild horses on the Central Plateau has resumed this year after Cyclone Gabrielle forced a year off. The dramatic muster of wild Kaimanawa horses took centre stage on the NZ Defence Force Waiouru Military Training Area on Anzac Day with 84 horses rounded up by helicopter and trucked out to new homes.
The 68,000ha training area is a unique place, full of special plants and creatures, regular army exercises and a population of wild horses that has been doing a little too well in recent years, galloping out to about 540.
Department of Conservation senior ranger for the Central Plateau biodiversity team, Sarah Tunnicliffe, said the plan was to keep the population to about 300 Kaimanawa wild horses. That’s enough to maintain the population’s genetic diversity but not enough to cause unsustainable damage to the flora and fauna in the area.
That target hasn’t been realistic in recent years thanks to Covid-19 and then Cyclone Gabrielle which wreaked havoc in the North Island, and on many of the places owned by those involved in the muster or those giving the horses a new home. “A lot of those people were trashed. The whole infrastructure for the horses after they leave the range was up in the air so it was better to leave it for another year and then regroup and let people sort their own places out.”
Tunnicliffe said she was okay with the numbers for now because they have a second muster planned this year that involved rehoming more horses and the continuation of a trial that sees mares given a contraceptive injection, further slowing the population growth.
During last week’s muster small, nimble helicopters were used to push the horses into the Moawhango River Gorge where a trap was set up to funnel them into yards.
Wild horse management is not as basic as it was when it began in 1993. Large numbers of horses meant more drastic culling methods were used.
Since then, a desire to find nonlethal methods of reducing the population has seen the development of the Kaimanawa Wild Horse Management Plan, prepared by the Kaimanawa Wild Horse Advisory Group.
The group is made up of representatives from DoC, NZ Defence Force, Ngāti Rangi, Mōkai Pātea, adjoining landowners, horse rehoming group Kaimanawa Heritage Horses (KHH), SPCA, Forest and Bird and the NZ Veterinary Association.
Lethal methods of population control have not been required for seven years, Tunnicliffe said.
“There are ones that don’t make it through the yards, whether they are found on the range injured or those kinds of things but we are not having to use that as an option at this stage.”
She said controlling wild horse populations could be “confrontational” and other countries had also struggled with it too.
“Everybody says ‘this is how we are going to do it’, not listening or not working together ... they end up with a big problem and have to do something about it. We have been there, done that 20 years ago and worked through that – what to do and how to do it.”
Kaimanawa Heritage Horses chairwoman Carolyn Haigh said finding enough homes each year was a big job.
The welfare team visited the properties of those who applied and checked them as early as possible because quite often they need adjustments to the yards.
“They should have another horse on the property because horses are used to living in herds so it is very stressful for them to be by themselves.”
Most of the horses will go to a trainer this year first.
“They will go to their homes when they are able to be handled and have a halter on and can be safely loaded onto a truck or float and then their training will continue at their home.”
The organisation had been raising awareness and funds by running bus tours out into the range to see the wild horses. They took 600 people through last year.
Haigh hoped the contraceptive programme would ease the pressure on having to find so many homes.
The area contains at least 16 species of plants that are listed in the New Zealand Threat Classification System. Many of those plants were in habitats that can sustain very little disturbance from horses.