Dave, your argument actually
underscores my point. The ecosystem is now entirely different--the
"shaping predators" as you call them are not there (and are not
likely to be there), therefore the horse DOES damage the ecosystem.
It takes the entire spectrum of the old ecosystem to
make it the "same" or to make horses "native.
Heidi, I don’t see how my argument underscores your
point. If you reread my earlier note, I never said that because the horse’s
shaping predator is no longer present, the horse doesn’t damage the
ecosystem. In fact, I stated that it is BECAUSE THERE IS NO NATURAL HORSE
PREDATOR LEFT, the two federal agencies that manage wild horses must find suitable
ways to keep the horse from damaging its habitat. It is your second point
that has me confused, i.e., that without having the old ecosystem intact, the
horse is not a native and therefore, a “feral” introduction. “Feral”
and “native” are words with definite meanings. The fact that
during its long absence from its birthplace the horse’s homeland was
altered, either by the hand of man, or some other agency, doesn’t make
the horse a feral animal. It is a North American native, as is the elk,
mule deer, or pronghorn. To draw a parallel, the great tribes of the plains no
longer hunt bison. In fact, without such hunters there is no known shaping
predator of bison (perhaps it was the huge maned North American Lion) . Thus the
bison’s “old ecosystem” has changed. Does that make
them feral? Of course not. (It is true that where they still co-exist, wolves
and grizzly bears will occasionally take down an injured or diseased bison, but
they are not efficient enough bison slayers to be the bison’s shaping
predator.) Bison evolved in North America
just as the horse did. The horse’s fossil record is quite
clear. Indeed, because it is so complete, the evolutionary fossil
record of the horse has long been used to show how evolution occurs. And
the record shows that like the bison, the horse originated here, evolved
here and that it was in its present form when it disappeared from here.
In my book, that makes it a native. As to why the horse survived in Asia “with
greater numbers of human hunters” but not in North America, the
current theory is that the horse migrated to Asia
during an earlier ice age, perhaps as early as 60,000 years ago, long before
modern humans occupied the Asian steppes. When humans began to arrive, they
were not the efficient killers they would later become. They had not yet
completed fashioning their hunting tool kit. They had spears, but not yet
throwing sticks, and the bow and arrow was many thousands of years in the
future. Also, the makeup of the Steppes gave all the advantages to
the horse. It could detect its predators from long distances. Once
alerted, it could flee in any direction. So the horse had time enough to
learn that humans were a prime predator and evaded humans as they would any
other horse slayer. We know from the cave paintings in France, that
humans were hunting horses at least 40,000 years ago. As to you and your
Scottish ancestry, technically, you are a European, not a “Native
American.” By custom and by law, we reserve that term for the descendants
of those early Asian hunters who crossed into the New
World and began to decimate the fauna they found – including
the horse.
