Photo credit: National Park Service
In 1947 author Marguerite Henry wrote a children’s book that turned a foal named Misty into an international celebrity. Misty of Chincoteague introduced readers to the now-famous herd of feral horses on Assateague Island. A barrier island off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, Assateague is actually home to two separate and distinct herds. The northern part of the island is operated by the U.S. National Park Service. There’s a fence dividing the island at the Maryland/Virginia line, and the fabled swimming ponies roam on the Virginia side of the island.
Both herds are feral ponies, occupying the same island. But the herds are different in virtually every other way.
“The horses in Virginia are privately owned, whereas the horses in Maryland are owned by the taxpayers,” explains Kelly Taylor, Assistant Public Information Officer at the National Park Service in Maryland. “Horses in Maryland don’t participate in the annual swim. That’s a private venture. We have no control over what goes on there. They’re basically livestock.”
The swim, an annual event held in July, attracts tourists from around the world. It’s the core of a fund-raiser for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, the group that manages the Virginia herd and sells several ponies at their auction.
Stalking the Ponies
Recently the Virginia herd was in the news for something other than their annual swim. Several of the ponies developed an infection that turned deadly. Swamp cancer, thought to be caused by an aquatic fungus, resulted in the deaths of seven of the Chincoteague ponies at the end of 2018 and early 2019. The fungus is an opportunistic killer, taking advantage of abrasions or open sores on the horses wading or standing in the freshwater pools that are abundant on the Virginia part of the island.
Veterinarians do visit and treat the Virginia ponies, but since the ponies are free range and often not easy to see, it’s not always obvious that there is a dangerous lesion turning into a lethal problem for the ponies.
“The herd here in Maryland is left strictly to Mother Nature,” Taylor says. “It’s tended by Mother Nature.” She says that the horses do get their shares of scrapes and cuts, but so far there has been no evidence of the swamp cancer that killed the ponies in Virginia.
“We have not seen it. We don’t know why,” she says. “It’s a fungus that lives in fresh water, and there’s a lot of fresh water in the Virginia section of the island.”
Controlling the Population
Assateague has a capacity limit for the number of horses it can support. The Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company manages their herd size through removal and sale of ponies at their annual auction after the ponies swim across the Assateague Channel to the mainland. The herd size is capped at 150 ponies under the permit granted by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. There are 79 ponies on the Maryland side of the island, according to Taylor.
Taylor says that the National Park Service mandate is to—as much as possible—get out of Nature’s way. “There’s no natural predators for the horses, that’s why we control the population,” Taylor says. “We have to manage the island for all types of wildlife. That’s why we have them on birth control.” She says they use Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP), along with the vagaries of nature. PZP is an injection, given annually to mares and it’s an effective contraceptive that has no negative side effects.
But because the ponies on the Maryland side of the island do not receive routine veterinary care, Nature often puts the brakes on population. “If a foal dies at birth or the mother and the foal die, we don’t render any aid. We’ve had a handful of foals that have been born and then died several days later, but that happens with fox, with rabbits and birds.” She says that they generally do pregnancy tests in November and get results in December. But because of the government shutdown, results were not yet available in early February.
Spanish Galleons or Colonists?
There’s a romantic origin story about how the ponies got to Assateague. In that story, the ancestors of the ponies roaming the island today swam from sinking Spanish Galleons to the safety of the barrier island. “A lot of people are lured by the romance of the Spanish galleons that sunk,” Taylor says. In fact, there is no documentary evidence to prove that. She says it’s more likely that the ponies—along with sheep, goats and cattle—were turned loose on the island so the colonists could evade the law requiring them to fence in their cleared land.
On this issue, there is actual documentation, Taylor says. “The other critters were here, so we have to manage the island for more than the horses.” She talks about the importance of fiddler crabs and other marsh creatures, along with the birds. “Secretive marsh birds that need tall patches of grass. We have to consider that. When we manage, we’re looking at the carrying capacity of the island.”
A Magical Place
While the swimming ponies attract a lot of attention, Taylor says that there are a lot of reasons to visit this beautiful barrier island throughout the year. “Seventy-five per cent of the two million annual visitors come through June, July and August,” she says, “which is the worst time to be here because of the biting flies, insects and mosquitoes. They drive the horses into the more open areas.” That would be the shade-less sunny areas.
“The best times are the shoulder seasons,” she says. “Late spring, before Memorial Day when it starts to warm up and early fall—the days are still long enough and nights are cool.”
Taylor has worked with the National Park Service since 1994, beginning her career in Florida. She loves the way Assateague changes with the seasons and finds it a magical place. “There is something magical about the horses, and on a cold winter day when everything is dark and grey and the sun is coming up and they’re just standing there with puffs of condensation in the air…it’s pretty amazing. Winter is magical, because of the frost. It looks like someone threw glitter everywhere.”
She says we have to thank Marguerite Henry for her book, “that gets children and adults excited about the mystique.” It’s a mystique that is protected and preserved for future generations.