POLSON — It was a historic event, witnessed by not a single human being on Earth.
Which was maybe as it should be.
For the first time in more than a century, a wild horse has given birth on Wildhorse Island. It happened in the last couple of months and was the most unplanned of unplan
ned pregnancies.
When Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks transplanted four wild black mares onto the island last June, it was the first time the state had placed female horses on Flathead Lake’s largest island, 99 percent of which is managed as a primitive state park.
The management plan for Wildhorse Island State Park calls for a maximum of five wild horses to run free on the island’s 2,164 acres. There, they join significantly higher numbers of bighorn sheep and mule deer who call the island home.
The horses’ presence is solely a tip of the hat to the island’s name, first noted in the diaries of explorer John Mullan, who in 1854 witnessed the herds local Indians kept on the island to protect them from rival tribes.
Spying one of the animals is one of the most treasured memories of a visit to Wildhorse.
But the tiny herd is not supposed to reproduce, just be replenished every couple of decades as older horses die off.
Not to worry. The two males the mares joined on Wildhorse were both geldings — i.e., castrated — and one of them was so old he appeared to be on his last legs.
One of the mares, however — unbeknownst to anyone then, and obvious now – had apparently been, as Jerry Sawyer puts it, “fiddling around” prior to being moved to her new home.
“It was a surprise,” says Sawyer, who manages the seven state parks located on Flathead for FWP. “We didn’t realize one was pregnant when we transplanted them.”
The pretty new filly is a Paint — a spotted white horse, this one with rust-colored areas — and is a sight to behold standing next to her pitch-black mother.
“Either the sire is a Paint, or I guess it can skip a generation, too,” Sawyer says.
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The population of Wildhorse’s wild horses had dipped to just one when FWP began replenishing the herd in late 2009.
The one left standing was the last of five geldings transplanted to the island in 1992, and is approximately 30 years old, well past the typical life expectancy of a wild horse.
Sawyer has been surprised the old guy, whose ribs are clearly visible despite plenty of forage, has made it through the last two winters.
“He’s having trouble with his metabolism,” Sawyer says, “but he’s still kicking.”
First to join him was a wild Mustang adopted from the Bureau of Land Management, on Christmas Eve 2009.
The four wild black mares, donated from a herd owned by state Sen. Brad Hamlett, D-Cascade, and Lyle Heavy Runner of Great Falls, arrived in June.
Years ago, the two men acquired a stallion from the famed Pryor Mountain wild horse herd. Genetic testing showed that horse descended from the Spanish Barbs that arrived in the Americas with the conquistadors of the 16th and 17th centuries, according to FWP.
The stallion was placed on land adjacent to the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park near Ulm that the men leased from the state. They then added wild mares from BLM land in Nevada.
Several colts and fillies have been born since, and Wildhorse’s four new mares, all 6 or 7 years old when they were transplanted, were some of those offspring.
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Island resident Barry Gordon was tickled by the news of the birth.
“It made my day,” says Gordon, who called the Missoulian as soon as he heard the news during a phone call with the recently retired volunteer ranger at Wildhorse, Zeff Kingsley . “I think it’s fantastic that the island will be the only place this horse ever knows.”
It does push the population past what’s called for in the state’s management plan, but Sawyer says the foal will not be removed.
“It gives us 6 1/2 horses right now,” he says.
After this one grows, and the oldest dies, “It’s still one too many for the management plan, but we’re not going to take it off the island,” he goes on. “What are you going to do? When the older one dies we’ll still have one extra horse, but that’s within a reasonable number of the desired population.”
It helps that this is a filly.
“If it had been a male we would have had to try to geld it in order to keep it on the island,” Sawyer says. “Being a mare will not be a big issues, because the two males out there are geldings.”
So it should be the last horse ever born on Wildhorse, too.
“What’s really unique is this is the start of a whole new episode,” Gordon says. “This horse could be out here for 25 years or more, if it lives as long as they normally do.
“It really is Wildhorse Island now.”
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
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