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Theodore Roosevelt National Park Weighing Livestock Management Plan

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By Kurt Repanshek - March 18th, 2022

How should feral horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park be managed?/Kurt Repanshek file

Whether Theodore Roosevelt National Park should more actively manage its feral horses and longhorn cattle, and if so, how, are questions up for public consideration and input.

Those are interesting questions for a landscape where the native wildlife included bison, wolves, and elk, not horses and cattle. However, horses and cattle were part of the landscape when a young Theodore Roosevelt ranched here, on a part-time basis, in the late 1800s.

Since 1970 the National Park Service has actively managed a small herd of longhorn cattle at the park in northwestern North Dakota, while feral horses have been managed there since 1978 under an environmental assessment. Now, though, the Park Service is taking another look at how it manages those livestock "as historic exhibits."

Among the questions up for consideration are:

  • What is the desired visitor experience when it comes to the cattle and horses?
  • How best to minimize their impacts on the park's natural resources.
  • How much of the park's budget should go towards management of cattle and horses?
  • How can the park's bison be protected from a deadly disease (Mycoplasma bovis) that can be transmitted from the longhorns and domestic cattle that find a way onto park grounds?

Options currently being considered range from simply continuing to manage the horses with a population objective of 35-60 animals and up to a dozen longhorns, or letting those population targets go up a bit or removing the longhorns from the park and maintaining the horse population between 30 and 70 individuals. 

Public input on the park's proposals is being taken through April 15 at this site. A virtual public meeting on the options is set for March 30 from 6 p.m to 7:30 p.m. To register for the event, visit this page.

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