Preserving the Herd: How you can help keep the Corolla wild horses safe for years to come

OUTER BANKS, N.C. (WAVY) — The wild horses are a big staple on the Outer Banks, but preserving their environment is getting harder and harder each year.

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund says they do everything they can to keep the wild horses safe, but with more people petting them, and feeding them, or just leaving trash on the beach, it’s becoming more difficult to keep them in their natural habitat and keep their numbers up, but there are things that you can do to help preserve the herd for years to come.

“If we want this place to be accessible and people want to continue coming here and have it be what it is, everybody has to have a stake in it,” said Corolla Wild Horse Fund Manager Meg Puckett.

The Corolla Wild Horses date back more than five to six hundred years to the first explorers.

At one time nearly a thousand wild banker horses roamed the beaches.

“They are a cultural icon, they are a historical icon,” said Puckett.

But as time has gone on, the herd’s numbers continue to shrink. Only about 200 horses still exist in North Carolina between the Outer Banks and Cape Lookout.

Herd Manager Meg Puckett says they count the horses each year, but there could be more out there that they don’t see everyday.

“The horses have about 76-hundred acres of habitat available to them, and its very mixed habitat, so you have the beach and you have hundreds of acres of very rough habitat. its marshy its swampy so a lot of it is not easily accessible to humans,” said Puckett.

As more houses go up and more people come in to explore the beaches, preserving their habitat is becoming more difficult.

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund works to acquire land and take it out of development, but sometimes people are the biggest threat to their environment.

“It’s vitally important that everyone who cares about the horses, cares about the beach, wants to be able to come here and see them 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now is deeply invested in being a part of protecting them,” said Puckett.

Puckett says they’ve had some instances where people will walk up and pet the horses or try to feed them.

She says people must stay at least fifty feet away at all times, because it is important to remember these horses are wild.

“People love these horses, they get excited to see them and I think sometimes in that excitement they forget they are wild,” said Puckett. “They are very dangerous and very unpredictable, they can hurt someone very badly even unintentionally.”

Puckett says the horses face so many natural challenges to their survival that we don’t have a lot of control over, so it’s important to be aware of the things we can control.

“We can’t control them when they are behaving naturally and fighting with each other, there could be natural disasters or things like that, things that we don’t have control over that really can be challenging for them, so the last thing we want to do is add to those challenges with things that we can control like petting them and feeding them and things like that,” said Puckett.

Horses also can’t vomit, so if they eat something that isn’t good for them, like trash or human food, it can cause internal damage and could be fatal.

The organization then has to take them off the beach to get treated, and once they’re transitioned to the rehabilitation stables, they can’t go back to the beach.

“We’ve lost foals before to natural causes, its devastating, its sad but its not as hard as having to take a horse off the beach because someone fed it an apple,” said Puckett.

There are signs posted all over the beaches with the rules, but sometimes people neglect to follow them.

Another way you can help, is airing down your tires, so the beach is in good shape if the organization needs to get trucks and equipment down the beach to help the horses.

A lot of people enjoy exploring the beaches – in trucks and jeeps, but its important to leave only hoofprints behind.

“Every single thing that happens out here on this beach impacts the horses in one way or the other,” said Puckett. “I think respect is the main word here, just being respectful of the environment, respectful of the horses and the other wildlife and also respectful of the people that live here and call this place home.”

There are tours offered if you are interested in the wild horses and Puckett says they’re a safe and educational way to do just that.

She adds they’re always worried about the future of the wild horses, but doing some of these simple things can preserve their environment for years to come.

“It’s very important that we keep a wild population of horses here, being wild is what makes them what they are, its what makes them special,” said Puckett.

The Wild Horse Fund is a non-profit that depends on donations to help protect and serve the banker horses living on the outer banks.

You can donate, or sponsor a horse, or even donate to the land acquisition fund so they can continue to buy more land for the horses to have more space.

To learn more, click here.