In Vernon Parish, a herd of wild horses has roamed the Kisatchie National Forest for years.

Some people speculate that the horses have been there for centuries. 

And as far as the horses were concerned, the 48,000-acre forest in which they roamed was their habitat. After all, the Vernon Parish location was historically known as Louisiana’s “No Man’s Land.” Today, the land belongs to the U.S. Army.

The parcel in question is a part of the 90,000 acres of Kisatchie National Forest land that Fort Johnson, formerly Fort Polk, now uses for training. The base stands outside of Leesville, and the horses were breaching it.

The Army’s official term for the equines is “trespass horses,” and it wants them off its land, saying they have been a safety risk in training areas.

So, in 2015, the Army announced that it would start removing them. A group of local people answered that move that same year by forming an organization called the Pegasus Equine Guardian Association to save the horses.

But this isn’t the chapter of the story that sparked James Minton’s curiosity about the wild herd.

“I understand there is a sizable wild horse herd on or around Fort Polk, now Fort Johnson,” the Denham Springs resident wrote. “What’s the story about these horses?”

Minton, a former reporter for The Advocate, said he had no knowledge of the herd when he was in the Army.

“I took basic training on Polk’s South Fort and a leadership course and advanced infantry training at North Fort, called Tigerland, in 1969,” Minton said. “Although we were warned about harming wildlife such as deer and snakes, we were never told about wild horses. I saw something on Facebook recently about a wild horse herd, and I wondered about its origin.”

As for the herd’s origin, the main consensus is that the horses are descendants of those brought to the New World in 1590 by Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto and his crew, then bred by the Choctaw Indians.

“These horses have been here for generations,” said Amy Hanchey, president of the DeRidder-based Pegasus Equine Guardian Association.

Through historical analysis and study of these horses’ genetics, Hanchey says that there is data that indicates that the horses have been in the Louisiana forest since before the Spanish came to America.

“We’re talking centuries before, so because of the science behind it, it’s always evolving,” Hanchey said.

Still, the science shows that the horses born into this herd possess a unique gene traced to Spain and Portugal.

“It’s called the Iberian gene,” Hanchey said. “We found it through the process of obtaining these horses and genetic analysis by Dr. Gus Cothran at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Dr. Phillip Sponenberg at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.”

The Associated Press reported in 2018 that Sponenberg is an expert in Choctaw horses. The news agency included Sponenberg’s written statement on the issue:

“Photographs of some Fort Polk horses ‘show physical traits typical of the old Colonial Spanish type, which is rare among other horses in the United States,’” Sponenberg wrote, noting that horses with those traits generally turn out to have DNA that proves their heritage.

If these are colonial Spanish horses, he wrote, “this population would be a high priority for conservation as a genetic resource that is otherwise rare in North America.”

So, what is the Iberian gene? Well, it’s connected to an ancestry of horses that originated in the Iberian Peninsula shared by Spain and Portugal.

Horse breeds sharing this gene include Andalusian, Lusitano, Carthusian, Marismeño and Sorraia. Now the horses roaming Kisatchie’s Vernon Unit can be included among those elite breeds.

“The Iberian gene is a federally protected gene,” Hanchey said. “So, we are trying to get some federal and state recognition.”

According to the association’s website, pegasusequine.wordpress.com, many of the Kisatchie-based horses are descended from those of “Native American tribes, heritage families, settlers and farmers in the area that had been used for many purposes as they toiled to carve out a rugged existence in the early years, long before Louisiana became a state in 1812.”

The Army wanted them off its base, partly because the animals weren’t afraid of humans, which made the horses a potential hazard to the training area. Photos in the July 2018 edition of Army Times newspaper show the horses grazing on the backdrop of the Army base, along with another of a horse lying in the middle of a base road, blocking a convoy.

The nonprofit Pegasus Equine Guardian Association, represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, filed suit in the Louisiana District Court against the U.S. Army and Fort Polk, charging that the Army’s plan to eliminate herds of horses violates the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.

As reported by The Associated Press in 2018, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Foote accepted a magistrate judge’s findings that Pegasus Equine Guardian Association has not proved that people whose families lost land when the Army base was created in 1941 would suffer irreparable harm if more horses are sent away.

Hanchey said the area where the horses mingled and grazed was the Drop Zone.

“It’s the airstrip field,” she said. “It’s a cleared area that’s like a meadow with a whole lot of grass, and the horses have been cleared out, but there are some that still congregate there. The other area they still congregate in is Peason Ridge.”

This 74,309-acre tract of land has been renamed Johnson Wildlife Management Area and is used by the Army as a military training facility while also working cooperatively with Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries for management of habitat for wildlife resources and public outdoor recreational activities.

The military began removing horses from the fort in 1993 and tried sterilizing them in 2010. Though the nonprofit did not win its case, it was able to save 100 horses and place them in a sanctuary, while the Army cleared out some 360 horses.

“They rounded the horses up, and they were required to offer them to nonprofit organizations,” Hanchey said. “We were the third or fourth nonprofit on the list.”

The association has separated male horses from the females in its sanctuary. While this arrangement prevents the animals from breeding, it also disrupts the horses’ herd family groups.

“Within the herd, there are little family herds, where you have eight or 10 horses with a lead stallion and a bunch of mares,” Hanchey said. “You may have a bachelor or young male horse with the group, who will eventually be driven out. Once we took them in, you still see the mares hanging out with their little family group.”

The association established its no breeding policy for ethical reasons.

“It just wouldn’t be right,” Hanchey said. “One hundred horses are a lot of horses, and we are doing what we can to take care of that many.”