Northern Kaimanawa (NZ) Horses Need Your Help
February 28th 2009 11:41
Hi Catherine,
my friend Sascha Day asked me to contact you and tell you our story. She is trying to help me help a group of pretty special horses that our Dept of Conservation is hoping no-body will mind them exterminating.
I am from Zimbabwe where I met my Kiwi husband and we came home to his parents farm in 2000. It did not work out and we moved to a leased block which we intended to finance via an eco adobe brick plant Allan has been developing. We had an investor all set until the credit crash caused them to back out. And has left us in an awkward position in more ways than one.
I privately do holistic research on horses and have done for the last 20 odd years, in coming to NZ I came across some symptoms I had never seen before and began researching to understand. In the course of this undertaking we came to the conjecture that wild horses could possibly do more for rehabilitating domestic horses than people ever could. I made enquiries to home some mixed aged horses and my theory proved out remarkably well for my domestic horses.
I found a real key that had been missing in me in the process and my Mum reminded me that when I was all of 3 and 4 I was insisting that there should be game farms just for horses so that people could watch them - constantly asking where horses and watch horses when we were out game driving.
Then as synchronicity would have it we discovered 2 weeks before the intended date that DoC was going to attempt a muster of the rare Northern Kaimanawa horses. They have a Management Zone in the South that they reduce numbers on every year, but in the No-Go Zone in the North the horses have been shot on sight for the last decade and more. It was in this Northern Zone that the United Nations FAO discovered a unique genetic adaptation and labelled them a unique breed of horse. DoC was forced to protect them and did so for a few years but in that time they also mixed the Northern Horses bands down into the Southern bands and in so doing it seems to have diluted the unique protease gene (but this is not fully tested and confirmed as yet)
Any how so DoC made the statement that none of the Northern Horses would be homed unless the entire quota of Southern horses was homed - something that has never happened in the history of the musters.
When we heard about it - we decided that we would put the proposal forward to home the entire Northern muster. DoC had their vet Nigel Coddington come to inspect us and gauge my success with the previous 8 we took on. He gave us a resounding yes and ended up adding 3 Southern mares into the Northern group which he did not want to see go to slaughter. We have a very hilly 134 aerial acres and he knew we wouldn't mind.
Okay, so we now have a total of 38 horses and it includes the last mustered Northern Kaimanawa stallions, colts, fillies and mares. Its a huge genetic bank to safe guard and we have no way of securing our property or anywhere to move to or lease as yet. Our place goes up for auction on 19 March 2009. I have been putting the call out for assistance since we heard about our investor pulling out in early December 2008. To date nothing real enough has happened that will see the horses and us right. DoC is not interested (silent) in helping us out and neither are the two protection agencies that home the horses for sport. We put a proposal to DoC to lease us some DoC land where we would move to, at first they appeared to consider it but it would seem that one of the groups that resale some of the horses does not wish to see us succeed, for fear of losing their revenue stream. They are very threatened by our idea and that I managed to do "what was not possible".
We really wanted to be able to fund this ourselves and progress it quietly to something resembling Neda DeMayo's Return to Freedom sanctuary in Nevada. But it seems that that is not going to happen without outside assistance. To this end from Canada Liz Mitten Ryan heard about us and has offered us 50% of the sales of one of her books and some of her paintings proceeds, Rod Campbell donated us a couple of boxes of his books and Sascha Day has been donating proceeds of some of her kit off her website, all of which is really gratefully received but by and large of no help in the critical short term. Binh Trinh a master photographer heard about us and has donated his time and skill to create a photographic gallery where only the printing cost is charged and the rest comes to us. Its a wonderful way and could really actually buy the land needed for the horses survival- if 2600 sold world wide we could buy the sanctuary land outright. Only 2 have sold so far. My network is far too small to reach enough people fast enough.
In January I was contacted by Dot Anderson who in 1997 took 6 pure Northern Kaimanawa's from the mass round up for the purposes of preserving a genetic bank for our future. She does not have land either and has leased for the last 11 years, she has also bred from two pure Northern stallions and now holds a bank of 18. With my lot this means the breed has hope. She has asked me to take on her horses as she is battling to maintain them. The only real hope for the pure Northern Kaimanawa's is purchased land dedicated to them. With a little help from people we can do this. My horses are all wild, yet they accept me walking among them and some have initiated contact. I intend to keep them wild in their family groups in a typical game farm situation. Right now on so few acres the stallions run in bachelor bands and the mares with my domestic geldings.
I hope I am not way-out-of-line contacting you? For their sakes I must follow every lead that comes to me because time is truly running short on us here. I also don't know what exactly you could do to help us but if you have at least heard from me you can decide. If you know a philanthropist all the better! Please feel free to contact me - anyone is more than welcome to come and experience the horses while we are here too.
Kind regards
Tammy and Allan Ennor
eucalypts@farmside.co.nz
| 46 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Anonymous
the poor things what did they do to you?