Future of Wild Mustangs Gives Rein to Divisive Debate

When tourists began streaming northward along this undeveloped slip of barrier island in the late 1980s, the wild Spanish mustangs that had lived here for generations at first held their ground and acted as if nothing had changed.

Upscale developments with names like Buck Island and Monteray Shores sprang up from the sand, but the horses still sniffed out their territory, turning freshly planted lawns into an all-day salad bar. On hot afternoons, the horses congregated in the covered garage of the TimBuck II shopping center to catch cool breezes and escape the flies, a welcome curiosity until the smell grew overpowering. One herd tried to barge into the local Food Lion grocery when the supply of hand-fed carrots from passing motorists dwindled.

“It was a love-hate kind of thing,” said Currituck County Commissioner Ernie Bowden, describing the fragile relationship that developed between the horses and the human newcomers, including many from Washington and its suburbs. “The horses were turning over trash cans, leaving their waste around these expensive houses, and some people didn’t like that. Others felt like they were a part of the history of these Outer Banks and had to be preserved.”

But as hard as the horses fought to stay on their land, the explosive development that transformed this isolated stretch into a getaway for the affluent took a toll on herds that trace their ancestry back to the early Spanish settlers. At least 15 horses, including several pregnant mares, have been killed by cars since 1989 along the winding two-lane Route 12.

Traffic became so hazardous last year--and the threat of human fatality so great--that one stubborn herd that refused to budge from the busiest commercial strip was loaded onto trailers and trucked to the mainland.

Debate over how to handle the remaining horses has become, in some ways, a battle over this barrier island’s future. It has pitted naturalists against developers, equestrians against bird-watchers, landowners against governments, and natives against the tourists who have brought jobs and economic prosperity.

Most everyone wants to see the horses preserved. After all, the short, stocky horses in shades of gold, brown and black are the main reason that summer visitors drive north of the more bustling resorts in Nags Head and Kitty Hawk. But with land prices skyrocketing and development still booming, the question is where.

About a year ago, members of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, a citizens’ group dedicated to saving the horses, got state permission to fence them off on the island’s still-undeveloped far northern end. For the casual tourist, drive-by sightings of the roaming herds came to an end. The fenced area has no paved road and thousands of acres of land, much of it privately owned and rimmed by rolling dunes and marshes.

Rather than solving the problem, though, barricading the horses only increased the tension. Before long, part of the herd had made its home in the Currituck Wildlife Refuge, a nature preserve managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The area is a refuge for ducks, geese and other waterfowl, but the federal definition of “natural wildlife” does not include the horses. Soon, the refuge began looking for ways to keep them out.

The reason, said refuge manager Ken Merritt, was that the horses posed a potential threat to a section of the refuge inhabited by the piping plover, an endangered species of bird that uses the island as a nesting ground. To protect the piping plover and a variety of endangered sea grass, the wildlife service fenced in about 150 of its 1,800 acres to keep out the horses.

Local residents who had hoped the government would openly welcome the herds and possibly provide a permanent home were incensed.

“We have a differing view of these horses,” said Merritt. “We think they are basically free-roaming horses that were let go by ranchers years ago. Our view is quite different than those who believe the horses literally jumped off the ships and were part of the Spanish settlements 400 years ago.”

Federal officials, in fact, disagree with wild-horse advocates about virtually every aspect of the issue. The officials suggest that horse birth control might be in order, a strategy that has helped contain the growth of horse herds on other federal preserves.

After an aerial head count last year, federal authorities estimated the size of the Corolla herds at about 40 horses. The wild-horse fund believes there are at least 100, and Bowden, the county commissioner, suggests the number is more like 200.

Many people here, including Bowden, believe the federal government is deliberately low-balling the number of horses now in an effort to limit the numbers that will be allowed on the property in the future.

In anger, some have turned to the state, which oversees another 1,000 acres of nature preserve north of Corolla. The state has offered no land for the horses but has promised to study the problem.

Another option residents have discussed is to buy land from private owners and establish a private wild-horse preserve at the northern end.