Wally Owen

Medora

The National Park Service is planning to remove the wild horses from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Medora. Theodore Roosevelt National Park was established as a memorial park to Theodore Roosevelt and his ranch life in North Dakota Badlands. Horses are an important part of that story. Roosevelt mentioned his horses in his autobiography.

Horses were a major economic driver, and it was in a large way centered in North Dakota, with Huidecoper, who founded Little Missouri Horse Company in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, after the great blizzard, becoming the largest shipper of horses in the world.

In 1541, Coronado introduced the horse to the Indians of the Great Plains. The Lakota Sioux considered this new creature as a sacred animal. Every indigenous community that was interviewed reported having horses prior to European arrival, and each community had a traditional creation story explaining the sacred place of the horse within their societies.

On November 10, 1978, when the park was redesignated as Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Park Service recognized that bands of feral horses were an important part of the cultural landscape when T.R. lived in the area. The park is a cultural park/memorial park as much as it is is natural resources park. With a few Badlands national parks in existence, it could be argued its emphasis should be on the culture and influences of Roosevelt at the time, and horses were a part of that culture.

Do not change what makes the park unique. Interpret it. The popularity of the horses is evidence of what the people want. Manage and interpret it for the people. The horses were here before the Park Service. The horses are a natural resource, a cultural resource, a historical resource and possibly a religious resource. Manage and interpret!