
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 17, 1994                   TAG: 9403170071
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: CHINCOTEAGUE                                LENGTH: Short

CHINCOTEAGUE PONIES GET BIRTH CONTROL

Hormone therapy didn't work on the stallions. Now wildlife specialists at Assateague Island National Seashore are trying contraceptive vaccines on the female ponies.

For the past two weeks, wildlife managers have been inoculating 70 wild female ponies with the vaccine, which is designed to prevent pregnancy for about a year.

Limiting the wild pony population has become crucial to preserving the island's ecosystem. The increasing pony population is eating up the marsh grass and rare plants, trampling soil and bird nests and changing the nutrient balance of the soil with their droppings.

At Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, where a separate group of ponies lives, the herd size is reduced every year by selling many of the foals.

But national seashore officials in Maryland didn't want to give away, sell or kill their ponies. To do so would require rounding up and otherwise disrupting the lives of animals that they want to keep as a free-roaming, feral species.

In 1986, researchers started contraceptive studies that focused on controlling the hormones of stallions. But the contraceptives were hard to administer, and the hormones changed the horses' behavior.

- Associated Press

by CNB