Book Review “Wild Horses of the Last Land” by Wayne Linklater, published by Massey University Press, price $50. Reviewed by Tony Orman.
For decades the hundreds of wild horses living in the Kaimanawa Ranges in the Central North Island have been regarded by officialdom as an ecosystem threat, largely based around the ideology of invasive introduced (alien) species.
The anti-alien ideology – today largely promoted by the Department of Conservation – conveniently ignores that all humans are introduced by way of migration and that they brought kiore rats, dogs, sheep, cattle, exotic pasture and plants to New Zealand.
Scientist Wayne Linklater tended to lean to the much publicised anti-introduced wild animal thinking which in the 1950s, an visiting American scientist William Graf termed as “an anti-introduced wild animal phobia.”
Author Wayne Linklater started a four year observational study from the mid-1990s on the Kaimanawa’s wild horses. However over months and years of close observation and study he came to appreciate the complex social structures, emotional relationships within herds, loyalties and the horses’ role in the functioning of the ecosystem.
He came to admire them as “emotional and intelligent”.
Magnificent
“I came to know hundreds of horses as individuals and was captivated by the complexity of their lives”, he says. “Horses are magnificent in ways that I have never thought of an animal before or since.”
The author reflects of his earlier views on wild animals.
“Wildlife was either alien, introduced from somewhere else or native to the land. Outsiders were illegitimate. Natives belonged. And I thought of myself as a crusader for conservation, ready to exterminate the bad and rescue the good. Gained in the prejudices of my time, I was an eco-fundamentalist.”
“Waging war on some wild animals because their ancestors were domestic, or came from somewhere else, is just more of fighting with nature-- the conservation (and economic) interests that are determined to regard wild horses only as aliens or pests, and to regard people the people who prize them as wrongly emotional or irrational -- is not the sort of conservation that I want to be part of.”
Departmental dogma
Therefore it is not surprising that Wayne Linklater developed differing views from the “eco-fundamentalists” of the Department of Conservation.
He became increasingly alarmed by the extremists who demanded the extermination of wild animals without nuance.
“Studying wild horses extinguished some the stupid in me” he admits.
Besides that modification to his earlier inner attitude to the horses and wild animals in general, Wayne Linklater gives deep insights into the horses both as individuals and as an animal society.
He and his colleagues nicknamed individual animals as the attachment between humans and wild animals grew.
Studying and closely watching the horses involved an emotional attachment punctuated with exhilaration and also occasionally heartbreak such as the awfulness of rescuing a foal from certain death and then eight months later discovering a hunter had shot the foal.
Eight months later its mother and three other of stallion Charley’s mares died in salvo of small artillery.
Great read
“Seeing them be born and die, observing their loyalties and conflicts, successes and failure, I came to see horses as intelligent, emotional beings with rich social lives, forever altering my relationship with them.”
This is one great book, captivating reading and the author adeptly enhances the transfer of study technology to the reader. The 370 page book is very well produced by the publisher with an impressive front and back cover and numerous colour photographs plus maps.
It’s often deeply moving and compelling reading.
Very highly recommended!
“Anti-exotic wild animal phobia” is so applicable to DoC and also most local government.
This looks a really good book. I intend to get a copy. Compliments to Dr Wayne Linklater for poking his head up over the parapet against the dogma.
The bias against introduced wildlife species such as the Kaimanawa horses, wild deer, chamois trout, even possums and other creatures etc., liberated by the first European settlers, needs burying.
Treat them as resources for recreation, commercial harvesting but not, not the futile extermination edict which often involves callous cruelty.
Congratulations to Massey University Pres and the author Wayne Linklater.
I hope DoC bureaucrats read it!