“White Mane” (Crin-Blanc) now out on DVD

Has anyone seen this 1953 flick? It’s a 40-minute, b&w film directed by Albert Lamorisse. From IMDB:

In the Camargue, France, ranchers go after wild horses led by a leader, “White Mane,” which escapes capture time after time. A small boy who witnesses the horse’s furious fight for its freedom makes friends with the horse after the trackers supposedly give him up to whomever can capture him. They change their minds when they see the boy has tamed him and take off after the horse again, with the boy on his back. Both boy and horse, fed up with the continual fight for freedom and peace, and the duplicity of men, head out to sea as the men plead with the boy to turn back. (Winner of the Cannes Grand Prize in category in 1953.)

It’s now out on DVD; KiddieMatinee.com has another short review, and more images like the one below.

Related posts:

Lorenzo and his Camargue horses

The Ballad of the Irish Horse

Stranded foal rescued

The Northern Horse blog has a great story about a wild foal being rescued from a shoal in the Red Deer River in Alberta. Link (with better pictures!) via Wild Horses of Alberta.

Wild horse roundup in Spain

Men catch a horse during the “Rapa Das Bestas” event in Mougas, northwestern Spain. Throughout the summer, hundreds of wild horses are rounded up, trimmed and groomed in different villages in Galicia. Link

House votes to prevent commercial slaughter of wild horses and burros

Wild Burros of the Owens Valley, originally uploaded by Snap Man.

The House voted Thursday to prevent the government from selling off for slaughter any wild horses and burros that roam public lands in the West.

The 277-137 vote would restore a 1971 law preventing the Bureau of Land Management from selling the animals for commercial processing.

The protection was removed in 2004 when former Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., inserted a measure in a spending bill allowing their sale. Read more

I hope they’ll be looking into alternative ways of keeping the populations down, such as making it easier to adopt these critters, immunocontraception, etc. About a quarter of the mustangs and burros rounded up never find homes…

Ponies need to go

 

Twelve Exmoor ponies are having to leave their home at Coates Common, near Fittleworth.

The herd has been grazing the Lord’s Piece area of the common for the last eight or nine years, after English Nature – now Natural England – advised the owner, the Barlavington Estate, that they would control scrub growth.

Estate manager Stanley Mayes, who is now retired, collected the original seven from Exmoor and has since bred the other five.

He said: “I have now been told they are interfering with the colony of crickets on the common and must go. As I put them there, I have the job of getting rid of them.” Link

Related posts:

OMG ponies!!!!!!

Koniks in Kent

Extreme makeover, horse edition

Trainers from across America are invited to participate in the “Extreme Mustang Makeover”. Trainers will pick up the Mustangs at either the Fallon Facility in Nevada or the Paul’s Valley facility near Oklahoma City. They will have the Mustangs in training until Saturday, September 22, 2007. On that date trainers will compete with their Mustang for $25,000 in prize money at the Will Rogers Equestrian Center in Fort Worth, Texas. The trained Mustangs will be judged on conditioning, groundwork and a “Horse Course” which represents maneuvers and obstacles found in trail and recreational riding situations.All mustangs participating in the Makeover event will be available for adoption to the public on Sunday, September 23rd. Link

I dunno about this…but the mustangs will be worked with all summer, so it shouldn’t be a high-pressure situation. Anyone out there thinking of giving this a whirl?

License plates to help wild horses

Sally Summers displays the original painting that will be used for a wild horse plate before testifying Jan. 22 before the commission on specialty license plates. It was created by wildlife artists Jim McKew and Kelly Six.

Not content with merely honouring wild horses on coins, Nevada has gone a step further and added a wild horse and burro design as an option on state license plates. Proceeds from the plates, which should be available in a few months, will go to the nonprofit group Horse Power. Link

The wild horses of Abaco

On the small Bahamian island of Abaco, there is a dwindling band of wild horses. Descended from a strain of Spanish Barb, they are considered by many to be the most endangered breed in the world: only 8 horses survive on the island today. Read more about them.

RCMP ask for help after finding evidence in wild horse shootings

From the CBC:

Alberta Mounties hope a wristwatch, a disposable coffee cup, a hamburger wrapper and a plastic sausage roll container will lead them to whoever is killing horses in the western foothills.

On Wednesday, RCMP released photographs of the items found in the area, near the town of Sundre, about 85 kilometres northwest of Calgary.

Police also found the carcasses of a moose and a deer, and believe all the animals, including seven wild horses, have been killed by the same culprits since late December.

The Timex watch has an NFL Atlanta Falcons logo on the face and an interlocking bracelet.

As well, police hope restaurant or store staff may recognize the hamburger wrapper and the plastic container that has the words “sausage roll” written on it.

“Those are fairly unique. We think someone can say, ‘Yep, I remember that person buying it at the store.’ And when you look at the items themselves, the writing on the package is from the clerk and that clerk should know their own writing,” said Sgt. Patrick Webb.

Webb said he realizes people may feel hesitant about turning in a friend.

“But you’ve got to think about the crime that was done here. There were seven horses that were killed, along with a moose and a deer with wastage of meat at that time. So this is a situation where we want to find these people.”

Anyone with information is asked to call the RCMP or Crime Stoppers.

A reward offered for information that leads to the shooter or shooters by the Wild Horses of Alberta Society has now reached $10,000.

More wild horses shot in Alberta; police “zeroing in” on suspect

wild horse peeking at me, originally uploaded by mezze.

Today’s Globe and Mail brings more sad news, but a flicker of hope as it looks like police are getting closer to nailing whoever’s been shooting wild horses:

Police say they are closing in on the person believed to be responsible for a series of wild-horse killings in Central Alberta, as a resident riding horseback in the same area stumbled on four more carcasses this week.

“I’m getting some good tips coming in,” RCMP Corporal Dave Heaslip said yesterday.

The livestock investigator, who was careful not to divulge too much information for fear of scaring off the suspect, is planning to put his other cases temporarily on hold over the next few days as he prepares the evidence, including the use of DNA.

“I want to get this guy,” Cpl. Heaslip said.

Wild horse news

wild spanish horses, originally uploaded by candyonthebeach.

Researchers at the University of Nevada are tracking a female mountain lion believed to be preying on wild horses…

Shredded Christmas trees are being used to help a herd of Koniks in Kent…

A roundup of wild horses is underway in Sweetwater County, Wyoming; the horses will be available for adoption through the BLM…

The Wild Horses of Alberta Society is offering a reward for information leading to the scumbucket shooter of three wild horses west of Sundre…

 

 

Sable Island horse photos at Dutesco Art

Robert M. Dutesco captured some gorgeous images of Sable Island horses; see the rest of the exhibit here. (Link via A blog on all things normal)

Horse news in brief, 2006-11-29

 

Wild ponies on Assateague Island are threatening the environment, and the National Park Service is considering ways to keep the pony population down…

First annual Pantomine Horse Grand National held in Oldham, England…

High hay costs are leading to increased cases of abandoned and neglected horses in Oregon…

Three ponies were reportedly lifted into the air as a tornado struck the quiet English town of Boarhunt…

Some tips for talking your parents into buying you an equine for Christmas…

The FDA is warning horse owners about fumonisons in horse feed…

New research raises the possibility that Tutankhamun died from a fall from a horse or chariot…

The annual Riding of the Marches in Currie, Scotland, may become an endangered custom if no one can be found to lead the ride…

Koniks in Kent

A herd of wild horses have been imported to help restore a nature reserve.

The horses will be let out to roam free on an area grazing marsh on the river Stour, just five minutes’ walk from Canterbury High Street on Wednesday.

Thanks to the horses grazing on the site the land will become a haven for rare plants, animals and birds.

The horses from Holland are the closest living relatives of the extinct Tarpan, the wild forest horse that roamed Britain in prehistoric times.

The project has been organised by the Wildwood Trust and Canterbury City Council.

Link

The mustangs of Suffield

Until 1994 wild horses had open reign on the Suffield military base in southeastern Alberta, moving freely across one of the largest parcels of native prairie in the world. Over 1200 head, divided by their stallions into small herds, survived on the rich grasses that once supported cattle until the military annexed the rangelands in 1941. The success of the Suffield Mustangs in surviving and reproducing freely on the open range proved to be their downfall. In the early 1990s the military decided the horses were damaging the prairie grasses on the base and the population needed to be controlled. After a great amount of discussion and controversy on the issue, it was decided in 1994 to round them up and disperse them to anyone willing to take one.

This could have been the end of the Suffield Mustangs were it not for a few forward-thinking horsemen who recognized the historical significance and the genetic quality of these horses. These people, who adopted horses after the roundup, joined together to form the Suffield Mustang Association of Canada with the goal to promote and preserve the unique Suffield bloodlines. These horses are a historically unique part of our Western Canadian heritage and could never be reproduced.

The horses are primarily made up of Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred, Morgan and Arabian stock. Their numbers continue to increase thanks to the efforts of dedicated breeders, and four foals were recently put through a sale near Smiths Falls, ON. Suffield mustangs have also been featured in an episode of The Complete Rider.

Further reading:

The Last Wild Horses

Marlborough Mustangs And Cattle Company

Local couple sallies forth to protect mustang (news article from Nov 2002)

CFB Suffield

Horses of Suffield video

Wild Horses (Canadian Encyclopedia)