Meet the Feral (Free-Roaming) Horses of Point Calimere
#intothewildwithrufus
We spotted these wild horses, oops feral horses in Point Calimere Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary today.
Well, the Point Calimere Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary (Kodiakkarai) in Tamil Nadu is home to a huge population of these feral or free-roaming horses.
They are indeed descendants of domesticated horses that have reverted to a wild state, and hence they are called feral horses.
[Feral means, living wild, especially after escaping from life as a pet or on a farm]
The presence of these horses in Point Calimere traces back to the early 1900s.
During the British Raj, an attempt was made to breed ponies at Calimere to serve as pack animals for the nearby port town of Nagapattinam.
When the breeding experiment didn’t go as planned, locals began using the horses to transport salt from the nearby salt pans. The horses were often branded with their owner’s initials and left to graze, rounded up only when needed for labour.
The development of a proper road link between Vedaranyam and Kodiakkarai made horse-drawn transport obsolete, leading owners to abandon them.
When Point Calimere was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1967, owners lost the right to retrieve their grazing horses from the protected land. Left entirely to their own devices, the horses bred and established a permanent, free-ranging population.
Today, there are estimated to be over 200 feral horses living in the sanctuary. While they are a unique sight for visitors, they present a significant ecological challenge for the Forest Department.
Point Calimere was primarily protected to conserve the native, near-threatened blackbuck antelope. The feral horses graze heavily, and studies have shown that their expanding population competes directly with the native blackbucks and spotted deer for food and habitat in the sanctuary's limited grassland areas.
In fact, these feral horses are a real stunning sight and offer a fascinating slice of local history. At the same time, they also represent a very real conservation dilemma.
Can the sanctuary sustain both its native blackbucks and this growing population of wild horses?
A delicate balancing act needs to be done here.
We are sure that the Forest Department is on it! 😊
No comments:
Post a Comment