MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY - A feral horse advocacy group headquartered near Olds and the government advisory panel it was a part of have butted heads over the government’s plans for the future of the province’s feral horse population, plans that the group calls “equine genocide.”
At an Aug. 13 meeting of the Alberta government’s Feral Horse Advisory Committee (FHAC) in Calgary, representatives of the advocacy group Help Alberta Wildies Society (HAWS) said they were “ambushed” by the government panel’s request that each group on the 14 member panel sign a confidentiality clause in a new terms of reference (TOR) that would bar the sharing of committee discussions with the general public.
“By signing this TOR we would have been muted and bound by the agreement to keep wild horse management plans secret from all of you,” wrote HAWS founder and president Darrell Glover in a post on the group’s Facebook page. “Essentially, they would expect HAWS to become a party to their secret plans to equine genocide.”
The group refused to sign and was removed from the advisory panel.
In September 2023, the provincial government announced a new management framework for Alberta’s feral horse population, which includes more than 900 in the Sundre area. It seeks to integrate the free-roaming horses into a landscape-scale approach of managing natural resources, including forage.
It establishes different population threshholds for each of the province’s six equine management zones based on rangeland science, landscape ecology, feral horse population data and adaptive management.
A 2023 count found 969 feral horses in the Sundre zone. The threshold for a population cap in the zone is 1,000.
Population levels of horses approaching or at that threshold are managed through actions like adoption, contraception or other programs that help maintain or reduce the herd size, the framework says.
Developed with input from the FHAC, the framework also includes a pilot project with the Olds-based Wild Horses of Alberta Society where capture permits are issued to place distressed or nuisance feral horses into adoption programs.
Dating back several years, HAWS has been a vocal critic of the provincial government’s management plan for the feral horse population.
Debbie McGauran, a member of HAWS who was at the Aug. 13 meeting, said the government’s management plan involves strategies like giving the feral horse population contraception to slow, or even completely halt, the growth of the wild horse population.
“This committee was formed for the complete eradication of wild horses,” McGauran told the Cochrane Eagle days after the FHAC meeting.
McGauran said the government committee has been “unfairly stacked” with wild horse antagonists that largely represent the interests of the cattle industry, and other groups that would like to see the feral horse population decline.
The Alberta government says the advisory committee is exactly that -- an advisory group that helps to give the province direction on certain matters.
“The FHAC discusses tools and options to balance the value many Albertans place on seeing feral horses on the landscape with matters like public safety, protecting wildlife habitat, supporting local industry and ensuring sustainable use of public lands,” a statement authored by the Alberta government reads.
“The committee offers expert advice to improve feral horse management in Alberta. We are improving past approaches to feral horse management by incorporating new knowledge and the latest science,” the statement continues.
“This is quite political,” said McGauran, who says HAWS has counted less than 1,500 horses total on 5.6 million acres of space. McGauran says that the FHAC sought the removal of HAWS from the committee to silence opposition to the government’s plans. But the province says otherwise.
The office of Todd Loewen, the minister for Forestry and Parks, said that members of the Feral Horse Advisory Committee are required to sign the terms of reference to remain members in good standing, “a standard practice on advisory committees.”
“The Help Alberta Wildies Society did not wish to sign the terms of reference, and they are no longer a member of the committee,” the office’s statement reads.
The official framework for the FHAC states that one of the committee’s primary objectives is to “maintain a presence of feral horses on the landscape in the horse capture area while recognizing the need to steward the landscape in an ecologically sustainable manner” and to “mitigate risk to public safety or private property.”
“With us gone, the entire committee is now stacked with yes votes to begin implementation of the ‘flawed’ and non-scientific Feral Horse Management Framework,” wrote Glover, the president of HAWS.
