In the winter I walk the beach, often without another human in sight… that’s when my soul recovers. The first time I saw a peregrine do his stoop…the one and only time I saw a woodcock plunge to earth in his courting flight, the day I saw the first foal of the season being born behind my house, the year we had…for the first time in 50 years, a pair of eagles build their nest and the young stood out on a branch and did avian aerobics…getting their wings ready for flight.  –Wilma Young, former senior volunteer and intern with the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

By Jessica Van Dessel

Fall and winter can be stormy, so this is the time to stay on the high ground, and grow heavy, scruffy coats for protection. With the whole of Assateague at their disposal, the ponies separate into small herds, and pick different parts of the island for their home territory. The herds usually consist of the stallion, his mares and their foals. A typical day begins with an early morning visit to a fresh water pond, followed by eating, eating, and more eating, another session at the pond, and then the shelter of the trees at night. The ponies’ favorite foods are cord grass, which grows in the marshes, and American beach grass, found in the dunes. But they’ll eat almost anything on the island – including poison ivy.

Though they share the island with birds, squirrels, deer and foxes, the ponies have no predators to threaten them, and so their lives are generally peaceful. Stallions will, however, try to steal mares away from another stallion's herd, and this can lead to dramatic fights. The young ponies have many games they play with each other, that help them to learn the skills they'll need as adults. Once they are two or three years old, they will either leave the herd of their own accord, or (if they're male) be driven away by the stallion, eventually to form herds of their own.PopulationWhat is the biggest threat to the ponies' health and freedom? Ironically, it may be the ponies themselves. Assateague, being an island, has only but so much food available; if the population of ponies gets too big, there will not be enough resources to support them all. It's been determined that about 150 animals is the maximum number that can live in a healthy way on either end of the island. So what can be done to ensure that the herds stay under that number, without interfering too greatly in the ponies' natural way of life? In Maryland, park managers have recently begun administer birth-control vaccines to female ponies using dart guns. But in Virginia, the people of the island of Chincoteague have long had a simple solution to pony population control.Pony PenningChincoteague, unlike its neighbor Assateague, has been inhabited for decades. In 1924, the townspeople of Chincoteague had just formed a much-needed fire department, and were looking for ways to raise money to buy firefighting equipment. They decided that once a year, they would round up the wild ponies on Assateague and sell some of the young colts at an auction. The proceeds of the auction would benefit the fire department, the ponies would benefit from the thinning of their numbers, and everyone would have a festival to look forward to.This "pony penning," as it came to be known, is still a major attraction to thousands of visitors today, just as it was a big event in 1924. Pony penning is always held the last week of July. For the first part of the week, the Chincoteague firefighters and other men on horseback ride over Assateague, rounding up the ponies and driving them into corrals. Because of this, the firefighters have earned the nickname "saltwater cowboys" - and there's no question that they've earned it. The weather during pony penning is invariably stifling. The mosquitoes are fierce. Some of the ponies know every patch of quicksand, every impenetrable thicket, and every sandy slope, and will lead the riders through it all. Nevertheless, by Wednesday, both herds will have been rounded up and brought to the edge of the channel that runs between Assateague and Chincoteague.

This channel is about a quarter of a mile wide. When the tide is slack, the ponies are driven into the water, to make the swim across to the opposite shore. It takes them less than 10 minutes. They generally have no problem with the swim, but boats are waiting to pick up any pony that has difficulty. Crowds of admirers line the shore, cheering the ponies on. The ponies are rested for up to an hour; then, kept close in a formation, they parade up Ridge Road, to Beebe Road, over to Main Street and down to the holding pens at the carnival grounds, where they are held until the auction on Thursday morning.

Only the colts that are one year old or younger are put up for sale. Those judged to be too young to leave their mares are put back into the herd and can be picked up by their owners at the October roundup. There are three roundups each year so the ponies can be checked by a veterinarian and fire company personnel.

It can be sad to see the mares and the colts separated. But onlookers must understand that it is necessary to keep the population of the herd down to a healthy size. Besides, every colt that is sold goes to fulfill someone’s dream. These beautiful ponies are loved by families all over the world.

Home Again

It’s much quieter on Friday, when the ponies swim back home. They shake themselves off once they reach the shore of Assateague, and then amble back into the marsh. The saltwater cowboys might visit them again in the winter, to drop off loads of hay, but except for the roundups, the ponies will be left alone for another year, to enjoy their freedom on their wild island.

Jessica Van Dessel has lived on the Eastern Shore of Virginia all her life, in the town of Parksley about 45 minutes from the island of the wild ponies. She likes reading, hiking and bicycling, and has spent many hours on Assateague’s trails. She works at the Eastern Shore Public Library and farms with her family.

Assateague is a skinny strip of land with a hook on one end that lies off the coasts of Maryland and Virginia. It’s a barrier island, meaning that it protects the mainland from the brunt of the Atlantic Ocean. Much of Assateague is marsh and sandy beach, but there are trees and shrubs on some of the higher ground.

The island has no towns or houses on it except The Big House, that is, the former keeper’s house, just across from the lighthouse. South of that are two buildings which have been used for law enforcement housing and sometimes summer interns. The northern part is a national seashore, and the southern part, a national wildlife refuge. Under this protection, the many different species of animals that call the island home lead free and natural lives. And the most famous of the island’s inhabitants are the bands of wild ponies that have been here for 300 years.

Those who came to the Virginia end of Assateague years ago will recall seeing the ponies move about on the beach, walking on the roadways, and mingling closely with visitors, to the delight of children. But this up close view of the ponies is no longer allowed and in fact, it may be difficult to see a Chincoteague pony now, except perhaps in a distance. This is because in 1989, as the number of visitors increased, it was decided by Assateague management to fence the ponies into what are officially called “compartments.” An article in a 1996 edition of The Piping Plover, a publication of the Chincoteague Natural History Association, reports that fencing and maintaining the ponies within compartments is required to protect the majority of the freshwater impoundment habitats, threatened and endangered species habitat, and the fragile dunes.” It is not hard to come across stories from the past about ponies being struck by cars, about children being allowed to get close to a pony’s back legs and visitors feeding almost everything to the ponies. So the warning signs, “Wild Ponies Bite and Kick” that everyone used to see are no longer present.

This in no way keeps the ponies from roaming free in a wide span of open space, but it does make them harder to see. The ponies are divided into two herds, known as the southern herd and the northern herd. The southern herd is the one visitors see on the right side of Beach Road on the way out to the Atlantic. The larger, northern herd, numbering about 110 ponies, is not seen by the public unless visitors take one of the commercial boat tours, have their own boat, or take the tour bus run by the Natural History Association. This leaves from near the information center.

Where Did The Ponies Come From?

If the ponies have lived on Assateague for over 300 years, then where did they come from? Nobody really knows. There are a couple of theories. The most romantic one says that the ponies were shipwrecked on the island. Perhaps a Spanish galleon, taking a herd of small horses to work in the gold mines of South America, was wrecked in a storm; and perhaps the horses swam free, reached the shore and claimed the island for themselves. There were certainly plenty of ships wrecked off the shallow shores of Assateague in the 16th and 17th centuries.

But there is another theory that might be more likely. In colonial days, many farmers would pasture their livestock – including horses – on the barrier islands, because it was easier and cheaper than building fences. The animals were both protected and corralled by the water around the island, and when the farmers wanted the animals, they would simply round them up and swim them back over to the mainland. It was inevitable that some animals were forgotten or overlooked, and this, many people believe, is what formed the beginnings of the herd of wild ponies.

An account written by R. Owen Hooks in his Guide to the Wild Pony Auction tells how livestock owners in the 1600′s would release their animals to the islands to avoid paying taxes. England had established fencing laws on the colonies, “whereby a tariff was imposed on livestock enclosures.” Writes Mr. Hooks, “This relocation of livestock to dozens of islands on the Atlantic coast resulted in resident populations of swine, jack rabbits, sheep, goats, cattle, oxen and horses in many different places.”

The Chincoteague Ponies

Wherever the ponies came from, after 300 years they have turned into a special breed of their own: the Chincoteague ponies. Not as small as some ponies, yet shorter than an average horse, they stand about 13 hands high. They can be found in all colors, with many pintos among them. They are unshod, and their hooves appear to be unusually long, but this is simply because Assateague’s sandy soil does not grind the hooves down. The ponies also look fat because the high amount of salt in their diet causes them to drink a lot of water. Their average lifespan is about 20 years. The ponies are known for being good-natured and gentle but they are still wild horses

The Life of the Ponies.

With their freedom and a minimum of interference from humans, the ponies can live according to the rhythms of nature. Each season has its own events. Spring is when the new foals are born, one every year for most mares. Summer is probably not the ponies’ favorite time, for the flies and mosquitoes on Assateague are terrible. The ponies use their long tails to flick the annoying bugs off themselves and each other, and sometimes wade into the ocean to stay cool.