Home
The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin:
Their History and Future
by Wayne McCrory (Harbour $39.95)
Review by Jim Cooperman (BCBW 2024)
When Wayne McCrory first visited the Chilcotin in 2001 to research grizzly bears and other species, he came with prejudices about the wild horses in the area. McCrory held the common view that these horses are an invasive feral species that can damage native grasslands and thus need to be eradicated. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
After a few days of survey work during which McCrory and his study group encountered bands of large, handsome wild horses, he saw that the wild bunchgrass meadows where they grazed were free of degradation. McCrory began to question his previous assumptions.
Following an intense dream one night about climbing a cliff that morphs into a giant stone horse that for a moment becomes alive, he became inspired to study these wild horses and thus began documenting their numbers and mapping their locations and trails.
After two decades of rigorous field work, McCrory makes the case that the wild horses in this part of BC are a resilient part of the ecosystem in his book, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin, and must be protected.
McCrory isn’t the only one seeking to save wild horses. The Xeni Gwet’in/ ‘Tŝilhqot’in’ First Nation view the wild horse—or qiyus in their language—as an integral part of their lives, a spiritual element even, says Marilyn Baptiste, former Xeni Gwet’in Chief in the book’s foreword. “To protect our existence, we must also protect our wild horses and our rights to work with them,” she writes. “To protect them means never to break the spirit of the wild heart.”
The original goal of McCrory’s research project was to collect data for the Xeni Gwet’in to help support their goal to halt logging plans and create a massive wilderness preserve. A big part of the area they fought to save is known as the Brittany Triangle. The only reason that Brittany Triangle remains a wilderness area today is because of the tenacity of the Tŝilhqot’in, with help from conservation organizations, to do so. When loggers were ready to move equipment into the region in 1992, the Tŝilhqot’in blockaded the only entrance at Henry’s Crossing bridge. This protest action resulted in a promise from the then-Premier Mike Harcourt that no logging would take place without the consent of Xeni Gwet’in First Nation.
Two years later, land use planning resulted in the creation of parks in the region including the large Ts’il7os Provincial Park, but the wild grasslands were not included due to pressure from cattle ranchers and the Brittany Triangle remained mostly unprotected. After Wayne McCrory completed his initial research, he presented his results to the Xeni Gwet’in community in 2002 and recommended that the Brittany Triangle be fully protected as Western Canada’s first wild horse preserve. As a result, the community’s leader, Nits’iln (Chief) Roger William, recommended that the entire Xeni Gwet’in traditional 770,000-hectare land base be fully protected as the “Eagle Lake Henry Elegesi Qiyus (Cayuse) Wild Horse Preserve.”
Following his initial study, McCrory continued to do more research to determine where the horses originated, how they survived the harsh winters, how they coped after a massive wildfire had burned through the region and how they interacted with other species, including the wolves and cougars that prey on them. When he heard how the peat was still burning after the wildfires, he joined others with the difficult task of putting these fires out by digging trenches by hand. When he seriously burned his ankle after stepping into hot coals, McCrory was forced to leave on his ATV alone in the night, drive 22 kilometres to his vehicle “including through a stream” and then on to Williams Lake where he checked into a busy emergency ward, and had to clean the wound himself. Fortunately, it was only a serious second-degree burn which finally healed after a few months, despite a throbbing infection.
Certainly, a real treat for readers are the amazing photos and the many stories about the wild horses, including those so well known by the locals that they have names. Most often, the horses remained aloof and were difficult to observe, but McCrory describes one field day when a group called the black stallion band “…descended upon us from about 100 metres away. Chunks of turf flew as if flocks of little black cowbirds were flitting out of the way. The foals kept pace alongside, as close to their mothers as they could get. At the last minute about 20 metres away, the herd veered off in amazing unison as one sees in flocks of birds when they turn. They passed so close we saw the whites of their eyes and the pink insides of their flared nostrils.”
Thanks to McCrory’s impeccable research, we learn about the origins of these wild horses and how they ended up in the Chilcotin. Genetic testing of hair samples, along with physical traits that the primary bloodline for most of the wild horses in the Brittany Triangle is from the Spanish Iberian horses that arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century with the conquistadors, as well as from the Canadian horse that originated from the horses that arrived from France in the seventeenth century.
Although these wild horses are deemed by some to be feral horses, we learn they could also be seen as a species that has returned to where it originated. Paleontologists have long determined that the original horses first evolved in North America, then migrated across the Bering Strait to populate Europe and Asia, while the first horses here went extinct. The genetic testing also shows traces from the East Russian (Yakut) horses that have evolved to withstand extreme cold winters, which may explain how the Chilcotin horses have adapted to survive in this northern region.
Still, many of the wild horses of West Chilcotin are only partly protected, as an estimated 2,200 of the total population of 2,800 survive outside the Eagle Lake Henry Elegesi Qiyus (Cayuse) Wild Horse Preserve in heavily logged areas. Negotiations between the Tŝilhqot’in and the province are ongoing. In the meantime, wild horses are still subject to outdated provincial laws. In the past, bounties were placed on wild horses and many were killed. The province also hasn’t recognized the wild horse preserve created by the Xeni Gwet’in.
Overall, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin is a fabulous read about a fascinating topic that should be of great interest to horse lovers, to those interested in conservation and to those who love stories about First Nations that remain close to their lands. In this part memoir, part history, part research report and part adventure story, the Chilcotin wilderness comes alive through Wayne McCrory’s keen powers of observation, analysis and storytelling. 9781990776366
Jim Cooperman, author of the BC bestseller, Everything Shuswap, is a back-to-the-lander and environmentalist who lives with his wife Kathi in a log home they built decades ago. He is currently working on a book about the wildfire that devastated their community in 2023.
Their History and Future
by Wayne McCrory (Harbour $39.95)
Review by Jim Cooperman (BCBW 2024)
When Wayne McCrory first visited the Chilcotin in 2001 to research grizzly bears and other species, he came with prejudices about the wild horses in the area. McCrory held the common view that these horses are an invasive feral species that can damage native grasslands and thus need to be eradicated. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
After a few days of survey work during which McCrory and his study group encountered bands of large, handsome wild horses, he saw that the wild bunchgrass meadows where they grazed were free of degradation. McCrory began to question his previous assumptions.
Following an intense dream one night about climbing a cliff that morphs into a giant stone horse that for a moment becomes alive, he became inspired to study these wild horses and thus began documenting their numbers and mapping their locations and trails.
After two decades of rigorous field work, McCrory makes the case that the wild horses in this part of BC are a resilient part of the ecosystem in his book, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin, and must be protected.
McCrory isn’t the only one seeking to save wild horses. The Xeni Gwet’in/ ‘Tŝilhqot’in’ First Nation view the wild horse—or qiyus in their language—as an integral part of their lives, a spiritual element even, says Marilyn Baptiste, former Xeni Gwet’in Chief in the book’s foreword. “To protect our existence, we must also protect our wild horses and our rights to work with them,” she writes. “To protect them means never to break the spirit of the wild heart.”
The original goal of McCrory’s research project was to collect data for the Xeni Gwet’in to help support their goal to halt logging plans and create a massive wilderness preserve. A big part of the area they fought to save is known as the Brittany Triangle. The only reason that Brittany Triangle remains a wilderness area today is because of the tenacity of the Tŝilhqot’in, with help from conservation organizations, to do so. When loggers were ready to move equipment into the region in 1992, the Tŝilhqot’in blockaded the only entrance at Henry’s Crossing bridge. This protest action resulted in a promise from the then-Premier Mike Harcourt that no logging would take place without the consent of Xeni Gwet’in First Nation.
Two years later, land use planning resulted in the creation of parks in the region including the large Ts’il7os Provincial Park, but the wild grasslands were not included due to pressure from cattle ranchers and the Brittany Triangle remained mostly unprotected. After Wayne McCrory completed his initial research, he presented his results to the Xeni Gwet’in community in 2002 and recommended that the Brittany Triangle be fully protected as Western Canada’s first wild horse preserve. As a result, the community’s leader, Nits’iln (Chief) Roger William, recommended that the entire Xeni Gwet’in traditional 770,000-hectare land base be fully protected as the “Eagle Lake Henry Elegesi Qiyus (Cayuse) Wild Horse Preserve.”
Following his initial study, McCrory continued to do more research to determine where the horses originated, how they survived the harsh winters, how they coped after a massive wildfire had burned through the region and how they interacted with other species, including the wolves and cougars that prey on them. When he heard how the peat was still burning after the wildfires, he joined others with the difficult task of putting these fires out by digging trenches by hand. When he seriously burned his ankle after stepping into hot coals, McCrory was forced to leave on his ATV alone in the night, drive 22 kilometres to his vehicle “including through a stream” and then on to Williams Lake where he checked into a busy emergency ward, and had to clean the wound himself. Fortunately, it was only a serious second-degree burn which finally healed after a few months, despite a throbbing infection.
Certainly, a real treat for readers are the amazing photos and the many stories about the wild horses, including those so well known by the locals that they have names. Most often, the horses remained aloof and were difficult to observe, but McCrory describes one field day when a group called the black stallion band “…descended upon us from about 100 metres away. Chunks of turf flew as if flocks of little black cowbirds were flitting out of the way. The foals kept pace alongside, as close to their mothers as they could get. At the last minute about 20 metres away, the herd veered off in amazing unison as one sees in flocks of birds when they turn. They passed so close we saw the whites of their eyes and the pink insides of their flared nostrils.”
Thanks to McCrory’s impeccable research, we learn about the origins of these wild horses and how they ended up in the Chilcotin. Genetic testing of hair samples, along with physical traits that the primary bloodline for most of the wild horses in the Brittany Triangle is from the Spanish Iberian horses that arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century with the conquistadors, as well as from the Canadian horse that originated from the horses that arrived from France in the seventeenth century.
Although these wild horses are deemed by some to be feral horses, we learn they could also be seen as a species that has returned to where it originated. Paleontologists have long determined that the original horses first evolved in North America, then migrated across the Bering Strait to populate Europe and Asia, while the first horses here went extinct. The genetic testing also shows traces from the East Russian (Yakut) horses that have evolved to withstand extreme cold winters, which may explain how the Chilcotin horses have adapted to survive in this northern region.
Still, many of the wild horses of West Chilcotin are only partly protected, as an estimated 2,200 of the total population of 2,800 survive outside the Eagle Lake Henry Elegesi Qiyus (Cayuse) Wild Horse Preserve in heavily logged areas. Negotiations between the Tŝilhqot’in and the province are ongoing. In the meantime, wild horses are still subject to outdated provincial laws. In the past, bounties were placed on wild horses and many were killed. The province also hasn’t recognized the wild horse preserve created by the Xeni Gwet’in.
Overall, The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin is a fabulous read about a fascinating topic that should be of great interest to horse lovers, to those interested in conservation and to those who love stories about First Nations that remain close to their lands. In this part memoir, part history, part research report and part adventure story, the Chilcotin wilderness comes alive through Wayne McCrory’s keen powers of observation, analysis and storytelling. 9781990776366
Jim Cooperman, author of the BC bestseller, Everything Shuswap, is a back-to-the-lander and environmentalist who lives with his wife Kathi in a log home they built decades ago. He is currently working on a book about the wildfire that devastated their community in 2023.
