Wild horses on military land are not protected
FORT POLK, Louisiana––Fifty-four miles south of Zwolle, Louisiana, where the last cavalry-against-cavalry battle fought by the U.S. Army was staged during the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1941, a 25-year series of conflicts over the fate of alleged descendants of those horses may be nearing an end.
An elaborate exercise organized in anticipation of World War II, the Louisiana Maneuvers took two months. Rounding up and removing the estimated 700 to 750 horses at Fort Polk and the nearby Peason Ridge Military Training Area has so far taken nearly two years, and is expected to go on for several more years.
239 horses down, 500-750 to go
At least 239 horses have already been removed in eight controversial gathers since October 2016––probably not even enough to keep pace with foaling.
The horse removals, activist mistrust of the government agencies involved, associated court fights, and bitter disputes among involved parties all resemble the ongoing conflicts over Bureau of Land Management horse gathers in 10 western states.
As on BLM land, the horse removals and trouble might have been prevented, had effective fertility control been introduced years ago. At Fort Polk and Peason Ridge, however, the window of opportunity for suppressing the horse population appears to have closed long ago.
Unlike horses on BLM land, horses on military land are not protected by Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act of 1971. Neither do civilian researchers and horse advocates have access to military land to monitor the resident horses.
Whatever information is available about horse numbers and health status on military property comes only through the armed services themselves.
Dozens of U.S. military installations are believed to harbor wild horses, but Fort Polk is among the few to have published recent counts, and to have made public what it is doing to control the herd: in this case, attempting to eliminate it, as an alleged hazard to military personnel.
Sold to slaughter?
The U.S. Army and the several entities contracted to do the Fort Polk and Peason Ridge horse removals contend that all of the horses gathered have been properly rehomed or transferred to rehoming agencies.
Pegasus Equine Guardian Association (PEGA) founder Amy Hanchey, Freedom Reins Ranch & Rescue spokesperson Lisa Alexander, and other critics of the Fort Polk and Peason Ridge gathers argue that at least some of the horses have been sold to slaughter, or remain otherwise unaccounted for.
Fighting the gathers since the U.S. Army announced in August 2015 that Fort Polk would be cleared of free-roaming horses, Hanchey and PEGA filed a lawsuit in 2016, with the help of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, arguing that the horse removals would violate the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
Another court date coming
While most of the case has been dismissed, Hanchey and PEGA are to get one more chance, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Foote ruled in New Orleans on June 7, 2018.
The gathers can continue meanwhile, Foote ordered, while reassigning the case to an “unassigned district judge” yet to be named, to be heard on an unspecified date.
The pending case will hang on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Philip Sponenberg, a professor of pathology and genetics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. Sponenberg has served since 1978 as a technical advisor to the Livestock Conservancy, established in 1977 to protect old and rare domestic animal breeds.
Sponenberg will be allowed to argue, summarized Associated Press reporter Janet McConnaughey, that “some of the Fort Polk horses may be descendants of those brought to the New World by Spanish colonists and then bred by the Choctaw” indigenous people, who inhabited Louisiana in pre-settlement times.
If Spanish horse ancestry can be established by DNA testing, wrote Sponenberg in his brief, “this population would be a high priority for conservation as a genetic resource that is otherwise rare in North America.”
Similar arguments have already been rejected in lawsuits against wild horse gathers on BLM land in parts of the U.S. west, however, where the presence of horses has been documented for 300 to 400 years, and the Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act of 1971 establishes the right of horses to be there, albeit sharing the land with livestock, and within herd limits based on the estimated carrying capacity of the habitat.
Even if some or all of the Fort Polk horses can be proven to be descended from the horses used by the Choctaw people, this would not establish that the horses have been continuously present in the Kisatchie area for more than about 80 years.
Whatever horse population may have been there already was markedly increased in 1940-1941, when in preparation for the Louisiana Maneuvers the U.S. Army brought hundreds of horses by truck and rail from nine other states historically occupied by the Choctaw.
At that, recalled local resident Rickey Robertson in 1940: Last Year Home, Stories of the Heritage Families of Camp Polk and Peason Ridge, “Many of the National Guard cavalry units were not equipped with enough trained cavalry mounts. Agents for the Army spread out across the maneuver area and rented farm horses for use by these National Guard units. The poor underfed and undertrained rental horses could not stand up to the continued patrols and advances and were completely worn out
in a few days.” Few of the rented horses survived long in military use, Robertson said.
After the Louisiana Maneuvers, many of the last U.S. cavalry horses were reputedly released to graze and wander at the hastily built and then-temporary Camp Polk.
Named for traitor
The camp was named, paradoxically, for Confederate general Leonidas Polk (1806-1864). A slaveholder and planter, Polk before taking up arms against the U.S. government in defense of slavery was from 1841 to 1862 the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana.
Nearly half of the 198,000-acre Camp Polk site was and is within the Kisatchie National Forest, reclaimed from timber plantations in 1930. Most of it had been used only for the Louisiana Maneuvers, not for installations.
The unoccupied parts of Camp Polk, then almost all of it, looked like a safe place to turn cavalry horses loose until they were needed as remounts. If the cavalry horses mixed and mingled with lost or abandoned work horses from forestry operations or nearby farms, including on Peason Ridge, nobody cared.
Some of the troops might have enjoyed the irony that Leonidas Polk’s legacy was marked with horse manure.
But the Louisiana Maneuvers confirmed the necessity of mechanizing the U.S. Army as rapidly as possible. When the U.S. entered World War II on December 7, 1941, Camp Polk became Fort Polk, a permanent installation used chiefly to train tank and anti-tank crews.
Most of the horses left at Fort Polk were apparently never again used to mount troops. Many may have been rounded up and slaughtered for meat during the World War II meat shortage.
The often-served mess kitchen concoction called “shit-on-a-shingle” reputedly disguised “mystery meats,” including horsemeat, as well as dodgy chipped beef and––allegedly––saltpeter used to suppress the troops’ sexual appetite, a rumor always officially denied.
Trouble came with Humvees
Whatever horses survived World War II attracted little notice from then, through the arrival of the First Armored Division in 1956, use of Fort Polk for basic training during the Vietnam War years, and nearly two decades, 1974-1992, as home of the Fifth Infantry Division (Mechanized).
Trouble over the presence of horses at Fort Polk, mostly within a 48,000-acre tract of U.S. Forest Service property, began with the 1992 arrival of units of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who rely for mobility on Humvees.
Whether Humvee-and-horse collisions have actually occurred is unclear, but the risk that they might occur was invoked as cause for the first horse removal on record.
Fort Polk spokesperson Kim Reischling “said a roundup in 1993 snared 41 horses, which were placed with two local ranches,” wrote Associated Press reporter Janet McConnaughey in August 2015. “Another roundup in 2000 placed only eight horses with new owners,” of 175 horses gathered at request of the Louisiana Livestock Sanitary Board and tested for equine infectious anemia. Horses believed to have been infected were killed.
“In 2007,” McConnaughey continued, “horses were caught, tested for infectious diseases, and [surgically] sterilized.”
“Sterilization does not work,” Reischling contended. “With animals migrating in from other properties or being dumped, it has been determined that the sterilization process will likely not even stop growth. And in any case, it would take years.”
Hunting & horse poop
Summarized McConnaughey, “Some people speculate that the horses are descended from Army cavalry horses, and a local author has self-published a children’s book based on that tale. But it is more likely that they are descendants of area farm and ranch horses, said Reischling and Rita Bingham, director of the Humane Society of West Louisiana. Others were almost certainly released fairly recently by people who could no longer afford to feed them.”
Meanwhile, Kisatchie National Forest spokesperson Jim Caldwell disclosed another motivation for trying to extirpate the Fort Polk and Peason Ridge horses. Both the National Forest and parts of Fort Polk are open to licensed hunters. Hunters, Caldwell indicated in August 2015, had been complaining that “If you plant wildlife foods [as bait] for deer or turkey, the horses are right on those foods because they’re fertilized, and more nutritious.”
But Reischling emphasized to McConnaughey “horse manure in the areas used by soldiers.”
Captures by the public
For several years the U.S. Army issued permits allowing members of the public to capture and remove up to four horses per person.
“No methods for humane capture are outlined or overseen. No method for oversight of what happens to the horses after capture exists,” objected Wild Horse Education founder Laura Leigh.
Added Amy Hanchey in a Change.org petition, “Over the last three years we have witnessed inhumane acts such as horses being illegally darted and winched into trailers, inadequate capture and holding practices, free-for-all round ups that resulted in harm to the horses, roping of foals, foals being captured without their mothers, and a long list of alleged under-the-table dealings to the detriment of the horses.”
A contract on the horses
Eventually the horse removals were jobbed out under contract, to be done on a larger scale and at a faster clip.
In September 2017 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “awarded Texas State University’s Integrated Natural & Cultural Resources Team with several task orders totaling $1.75 million,” Stephen F. Austin University announced.
Headed by Todd Ahlman, director of the university Center for Archaeological Studies, the team was hired to “conduct archaeological surveys and support the management of cultural resources at U.S. Air Force bases and training facilities in eight states.”
$80,850 of the sum was allocated to help remove horses from Fort Polk and Peason Ridge.
Wrote Lake Charles American Press reporter Pamela Sleezer, “Texas State University sought bids from local contractors surrounding Fort Polk, who would perform the hands-on task of rounding up the horses, but according to sources, the only bid” came from Jacob Thompson Cattle LLC, also known as Thompson Horse Lot & Co., located about 15 miles from the Fort Polk main gate.
That was inherently problematic from a public trust perspective.
Court records and news reports show that Jacob Thompson and other members of the Thompson family have almost continuously been in trouble since 2005 for alleged offenses involving livestock transactions occurring in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.
Fines & probation
Among the highlights, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi in April 2014 ordered Jacob Thompson and three other members of the Thompson family to pay $245,404 to the Southeast Mississippi Livestock Association and the Livestock Producers Association for alleged violations of the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act and the Packers & Stockyards Act.
Pleading guilty in April 2016 to first degree felony theft of livestock and second degree felony theft of property, originating from an unrelated case, Jacob Thompson was sentenced in Hopkins County, Texas to serve 10 years on probation for the first degree felony and 10 years deferred probation for the second degree felony.
In January 2018, Jacob Thompson “was fined $3,150 for violating five Louisiana regulations including selling livestock without a permit,” Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry spokesperson Veronica Mosgrove confirmed to Janet McConnaughey of Associated Press.
“No horse slaughter happening”
Two other members of the Thompson family, one of whom was previously convicted with Jacob Thompson, were reportedly arrested for alleged livestock theft in Allen Parish, Louisiana, as recently as June 1, 2018.
Ahlman subcontracted the job to Thompson’s Horse Lot anyway.
“The agreement with Thompson’s Horse Lot is to capture the horses, then put them up for adoption through nonprofit groups,” reported Lauren Lanmon of KXAN-TV in San Marcos, Texas on June 18, 2018. “However, if nonprofit groups are unable to adopt the horses and members of the public don’t step up, the horses are sold at auction and likely slaughtered. Ahlman says so far every horse captured by Thompson’s Horse Lot has found a new home.”
Said Ahlman, “There is no horse slaughter happening. That’s misinformation being driven by social media. They have all been adopted to nonprofit horse rescue groups, and what happens to these horses after they go to these nonprofit groups, we have no control over. I can tell you that none of the horses have gone to the Thompson’s and have gone that route.”
Meridian Falls Ranch
Among the three “nonprofit horse rescue groups” receiving horses from Fort Polk on Ahlman’s watch, however, was Meridian Falls Ranch, of Buffalo, Texas.
Incorporated in August 2015, Meridian Falls Ranch is alleged by Hanchey and seven co-signers of an open “Letter of Concern” dated August 3, 2018 to be “a likely shadow organization that is in fact selling or sending the horses to kill pens and auctions.”
Founding Meridian Falls Ranch president and now vice president Shandi Ann Lebron, like Jacob Thompson, also has a multi-count arrest record for alleged offenses involving livestock, according to the “Letter of Concern.”
Elkhart Horse Auction
The “Letter of Concern” says PEGA has “several reports stating that 12 horses from round-up in May 2018 taken by Meridian Falls Ranch went to Elkhart Horse Auction in Elkhart, Texas, and the same is suspected for 32 from June 2018. Currently, as of August 1, 2018,” the “Letter of Concern” continues, “33 horses from July 2018 round up are sitting at the Thompson kill pen lot.
“The Thompsons are selling the horses for $385 per horse,” without required Coggins tests, “making it very costly and difficult for legitimate animal welfare organization to rescue these horses,” the “Letter of Concern” charges.
Among the co-signers are Jeff Dorson, founder and president of the 30-year-old Humane Society of Louisiana, who according to McConnaughey of Associated Press has also filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Hanchey and PEGA stating that he has “received complaints this month from tipsters who aren’t Pegasus officers about inhumane treatment of the horses” during the Fort Polk roundups.
University ended contract
Reported Pamela Sleezer of the Lake Charles American Press on August 5, 2018, “Earlier this year, TSU ended its contract with Fort Polk, which resulted in Thompson losing his contract to round up the horses.”
A day later Freedom Reins Ranch & Rescue founder Lisa Alexander said “she and a donor purchased a total of 28 horses from a horse lot known locally as ‘a kill pen’ for about ten thousand dollars,” reported Lydia Magellanes of KALB-TV News in Vernon Parish, Louisiana.
“The horse lot told KALB,” Magellanes continued, “that although they did sell horses to Alexander, it is unclear where each horse came from, but that they have never had Fort Polk horses on their property, nor are they interested in purchasing them.”
Fort Polk “unable to provide further info”
Fort Polk, meanwhile, said in an August 6, 2018 prepared statement that, “Fort Polk has completed an Environmental Assessment for the Elimination of the Trespass Horses from Fort Polk and successfully removed approximately 200 horses under the approved process. Those horses were taken by three animal welfare groups, the Humane Society of North Texas, Horses Lives Matter and Meridian Falls Ranch. A lawsuit was filed regarding the removal of the trespass horses from Fort Polk. Due to that ongoing litigation,” the statement concluded, “we are unable to provide further information.”
Said Ahlman in an August 8, 2018 posting to Facebook, “Thank you for your concern about the horses at Fort Polk. Texas State University has completed their contractual obligations to Fort Polk. Any further questions or comments should be addressed to Fort Polk.”