You make some excellent points in the piece, Ted. Your horse argument need a little work, however. Your "much smaller and very different equid" inhabiting North America during the late Pleistocene is actually the same species as the modern horse. The Pleistocene North American progenitor known from the Bluefish Caves is Equus lambei, the Yukon horse. Barron-Ortiz et al. (2017) state, "The caballine equid species appears to be conspecific with E. ferus Boddaert, 1785, and this is the name we propose should be assigned to this [Equus lambei] material." You might be right about the Yukon horse being smaller, although Cirilli et al. (2022) correctly point out that the mammoth steppe ecosystems from which it is best known are low-productivity compared to Holocene grasslands, so this smaller size may have been a diet-driven phenotype.
You point out that this equid was "native 12,000 years ago," which is true, but it is also true that it has been documented here as recently as 5,900 years ago (Murchie et al. 2021), almost 5,000 years into the Holocene epoch with its modern suite of ecosystems. This indicates a degree of co-evolution with North American flora and fauna that makes horses quite different from the European invasive species that occupy the majority of your article.
Finally, your article commits a significant omission by mentioning domestic cattle only in passing, and domestic sheep not at all. These are the most ecologically damaging invasive mammals in North America, also evolved in Europe amid much different ecosystems, and her on this continent are overwhelmingly most responsible for the scourge of cheatgrass and other non-native weeds, as well as depleted forage, depauperate native herbivore assemblages, and human-driven extirpations of native carnivores. Curious to spend so much ink and energy on invasive rodents that are clearly wiping out avifauna on an island-by-island basis without tackling the main cause of endangerment and extirpations on the mainland -- domestic livestock.
I'm committed to maintaining and restoring healthy native ecosystems worldwide, so I take no issue with the need to eliminate invading species that are responsible for ecological problems. The argument that wild horses are one of these species just isn't strong enough to make the cut, and loses out to the more convincing argument that horses are a harmless part of a North American herbivore assemblage that co-evolved with them for millennia in North America, indeed 99.991% of the time that equids existed on the planet.
Erik: Calling the extinct equid the same “species” as the modern domestic horse is sophistry, the argument advanced by Jak Kirkpatrick and the feral-horse support groups to convince gullible politicians that the recently escaped and abandoned livestock, id est, feral horses, deserve ESA protection. All wines are made from one species of grape. I would hate to have the feral-horse support groups choose my wines.
Yep. And I am very tired of seeing anti-science cattle exhaust about wild horses being native showing up on my public TV station via a carefully-misleading documentary. It has only shown up twice, but that is too often. I don't hate wild horses, I hate the myth that they are native to North America.
Unfortunately, wild horses are like cats in that they seem to bring out the irrational in some people. And I say that as someone who loves my (always-indoor) cats. The most damaging cat myth isn't that cats are native, it's that trap-neuter-release programs work well. I do understand why some people desperately want that to be true. It isn't.
I disagree that cattle and sheep were missing from the discussion and think that their enormous contribution to ecosystem degradation or vegetation change is better suited for a separate piece. This article focuses on “wild” and on “invasive” of which, correct me if I’m wrong, cattle and sheep don’t fit….. or at least in the states. I can’t imagine ranchers being too happy about eradication programs for controlling cattle and sheep never-mind the compassionate conservationists. Goats though!!
William: Not sure how or why you imagine that the accurate word "alien" connotes "hate." All invasive species aren't aliens (cattails, for example). But all non-native species are aliens, and most (not all) are invasive. Of course, advocates of native ecosystems don't "hate" starlings and English sparrows. What they hate is the stupidity of the Shakespeare reader who brought them to the U.S. and the stupidity of the people I wrote about who call them "persons."
Bravo Ted You hit another bullseye. Compassionate conservationists is an euphonism for village idiots
You make some excellent points in the piece, Ted. Your horse argument need a little work, however. Your "much smaller and very different equid" inhabiting North America during the late Pleistocene is actually the same species as the modern horse. The Pleistocene North American progenitor known from the Bluefish Caves is Equus lambei, the Yukon horse. Barron-Ortiz et al. (2017) state, "The caballine equid species appears to be conspecific with E. ferus Boddaert, 1785, and this is the name we propose should be assigned to this [Equus lambei] material." You might be right about the Yukon horse being smaller, although Cirilli et al. (2022) correctly point out that the mammoth steppe ecosystems from which it is best known are low-productivity compared to Holocene grasslands, so this smaller size may have been a diet-driven phenotype.
You point out that this equid was "native 12,000 years ago," which is true, but it is also true that it has been documented here as recently as 5,900 years ago (Murchie et al. 2021), almost 5,000 years into the Holocene epoch with its modern suite of ecosystems. This indicates a degree of co-evolution with North American flora and fauna that makes horses quite different from the European invasive species that occupy the majority of your article.
Finally, your article commits a significant omission by mentioning domestic cattle only in passing, and domestic sheep not at all. These are the most ecologically damaging invasive mammals in North America, also evolved in Europe amid much different ecosystems, and her on this continent are overwhelmingly most responsible for the scourge of cheatgrass and other non-native weeds, as well as depleted forage, depauperate native herbivore assemblages, and human-driven extirpations of native carnivores. Curious to spend so much ink and energy on invasive rodents that are clearly wiping out avifauna on an island-by-island basis without tackling the main cause of endangerment and extirpations on the mainland -- domestic livestock.
I'm committed to maintaining and restoring healthy native ecosystems worldwide, so I take no issue with the need to eliminate invading species that are responsible for ecological problems. The argument that wild horses are one of these species just isn't strong enough to make the cut, and loses out to the more convincing argument that horses are a harmless part of a North American herbivore assemblage that co-evolved with them for millennia in North America, indeed 99.991% of the time that equids existed on the planet.
Erik: Calling the extinct equid the same “species” as the modern domestic horse is sophistry, the argument advanced by Jak Kirkpatrick and the feral-horse support groups to convince gullible politicians that the recently escaped and abandoned livestock, id est, feral horses, deserve ESA protection. All wines are made from one species of grape. I would hate to have the feral-horse support groups choose my wines.
Yep. And I am very tired of seeing anti-science cattle exhaust about wild horses being native showing up on my public TV station via a carefully-misleading documentary. It has only shown up twice, but that is too often. I don't hate wild horses, I hate the myth that they are native to North America.
Unfortunately, wild horses are like cats in that they seem to bring out the irrational in some people. And I say that as someone who loves my (always-indoor) cats. The most damaging cat myth isn't that cats are native, it's that trap-neuter-release programs work well. I do understand why some people desperately want that to be true. It isn't.
I disagree that cattle and sheep were missing from the discussion and think that their enormous contribution to ecosystem degradation or vegetation change is better suited for a separate piece. This article focuses on “wild” and on “invasive” of which, correct me if I’m wrong, cattle and sheep don’t fit….. or at least in the states. I can’t imagine ranchers being too happy about eradication programs for controlling cattle and sheep never-mind the compassionate conservationists. Goats though!!
William: Not sure how or why you imagine that the accurate word "alien" connotes "hate." All invasive species aren't aliens (cattails, for example). But all non-native species are aliens, and most (not all) are invasive. Of course, advocates of native ecosystems don't "hate" starlings and English sparrows. What they hate is the stupidity of the Shakespeare reader who brought them to the U.S. and the stupidity of the people I wrote about who call them "persons."