A long time ago, when animal domestication wasn’t a thing, the wildlife of some animals was way more populated than it is nowadays. Horses are among the first animals who got domesticated a long time ago in three main countries, Khazakstan, Russia, and Mongolia. Since then, people understood how helpful horses would be for their economical and societal development.
Nowadays, there are domesticated horses everywhere in the world, however, there are not a lot of countries where horse wildlife exists and what is even more concerning is the fact that in the very near future, the horse wildlife worldwide is going to be critically endangered. Domestication is great, however, there is nothing more important for a horse than freedom, as every horse person knows; horses feel fully free only in the wild.
On the other hand, horses are safer domesticated than in the wild and the mortality rate of wild horses is higher compared to the domesticated one. Both of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s keep the focus on the short documentary below and explain what it is about. Strong Women, Wild Horses is a short film about a group of fearless photographers dedicated to documenting how horses live in the wild.
Armed with nothing but their cameras, these women venture into the Great Basin, one of the few remaining untamed areas of the U.S. to find the majestic free-roaming wild horse. But through their lenses, these photographers also reveal how wild horses are caught in the middle of a fierce land battle. The ranching industry demands more land for cattle and oil producers continue to extend pipelines across the country, threatening the lives of these animals.
In the video below, the women capture two extremes; wild horses reveling in their freedom — then freedom quickly ripped away as helicopters chase and herd them into captivity. Foals are separated from their mothers. Stallions are stabbed with stun guns. As you can see, the U.S government sees the growing population of wild horses as an economic threat, hence, their population needs to be decreased.
What is the saddest part of real life is the fact that economic development is always prioritized above everything else and this is not only a U.S problem but a world one. The problem isn’t the fact that the awareness towards this topic has not been raised, the problem is that it has been ignored. Only god knows how the future is going to look like.