Wild Horses, Ponies Should Weather Hurricane Florence Just Fine

OUTER BANKS, NC — The wild horses and mustangs that roam the Outer Banks learned centuries ago to survive powerful storms like Hurricane Florence, which is lashing the Carolinas with life threatening storm surge and strong winds. Their horse sense tells them where to go for shelter, according to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, which protects them.

The same goes for the wild Chincoteague ponies that live on Assateague Island in Maryland and Virginia, where Florence is expected to bring both minor and major tidal flooding.

Inevitably, powerful storms like Florence bring a barrage of calls from well-meaning animal lovers who think the horses and ponies should be rescued. But they’re better left to their own resources, experts say.

“They know where to go to stay high and dry and are probably in better shape right now than most of us humans who are scrambling with final preparations,” the Corolla Wild Horse Fund wrote on its Facebook page. “They are much better off without any help from us; anything we might do in the hopes of ‘protecting’ them would probably end up being more dangerous and stressful for them than the storm.”

Meg Puckett, who manages the herd of 100 or so colonial Spanish mustangs, told CNN that humans can do only so much to protect the horses.

“We do everything that we can to protect them, but in situations like this, these horses have incredible instincts,” Puckett said. “They're so resourceful, and they have an incredibly strong will to live.”

SEE ALSO: Last Mule On Outer Banks So Stubborn He Refuses To Die

The 15 horses in a small herd on Ocracoke Island have been moved to higher pasture and supplied with extra feed, “but we truly believe they will be OK,” David Hallac, the superintendent at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which oversees them, told the Greenville News.

“In all of the years that the island has experience hurricanes, we only know of one time a horse was lost because of a storm, and that horse was hit with flying debris from a barn,” Hallack said.

The story would be different if weeks passed before the staff could reach them to leave feed and hay, “but we believe we will be able to check on them not too long after the storm.”

“The horses will be able to survive for a few days even if they eat all of their food or even if some of it blows away,” he said.

The Ocracoke Wild Ponies are direct descendants of shipwrecks. At one time, there were more than 300 of the feral ponies, which are described as powerful and physically distinct due to their isolated lineage.

As for the Chincoteague ponies, “this is not their first rodeo,” Kelly Taylor, supervisor of the Maryland District Division of Interpretation and Education, told the Salisbury Daily Times. “They come from a hearty stock, and they can take care of themselves.”

Calling them “resilient critters," Taylor said “there’s plenty of higher hills for them to stand on” and “just like foxes and deer, they know what to do to be safe.”

Even before Florence made landfall Friday morning, the North Carolina’s wild horses had begun to group together.

“They go into the maritime forest, where they get under the cover of the live oak trees that protect them and go to the highest ground,” Puckett told CNN.

North Carolina’s outer banks have several herds of wild horses. Besides the Corolla mustangs and Ocracoke ponies, they include the Wild Horses of Shackleford Banks and Beaufort’s Wild Horses.

Corolla wild horses: AP Photo/Gerry Broome