Assateague Marks Death Of Scientist With Island Legacy

ASSATEAGUE — The entire Assateague community recently mourned the passing of Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, the scientist developed the population control method used by the National Park Service to manage the Maryland herd on the barrier island.

Kirkpatrick, founder of the Science and Conservation Center, passed away in mid-December after a brief, but serious illness. The Assateague Island Alliance (AIA), the friends group of the Assateague Island National Seashore, which provides support for the famed wild horses on the barrier island announced Kirkpatrick’s passing last month.

“It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick,” the statement from AIA reads. “Dr. Jay leaves behind a tremendous legacy that spans the globe. His work using the contraceptive vaccine PZP began on Assateague in 1988 and has since been used on wild horse populations across the U.S. and in Romania and Hungary, and in South African Game Parks to manage the populations of elephants. We send our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick and to all of those whose lives he touched.”

With recent losses of older horses in the Maryland herd on Assateague and the birth of just one new foal in 2015, NPS officials are now altering and readjusting the contraceptive program fostered by Kirkpatrick nearly three decades ago. The Maryland population now stands at 88, or well within the 80 to 100 range established several years ago. In the interest of managing the herd size, which, if left unchecked, would overtake the barrier island and gobble up the very natural resources the animals need to survive, the NPS under Kirkpatrick’s direction began the contraceptive program for mares nearly 30 years ago.

Selected mares are injected with a non-invasive contraceptive called PZP in an effort to prevent multiple births by the same mare as part of the effort to maintain and shrink the size of the herd to its manageable threshold. Kirkpatrick’s contraceptive program on Assateague has become a model for wild horse and other animal management programs around the country.

Assateague Island National Seashore and Kirkpatrick’s fertility control program used to manage the population of wild horses in the Maryland district of the barrier island was the first of its kind anywhere. Beginning in 1988, fertility control program developed on and used by AINS officials were the first to show that fertility control could be applied to free-ranging wildlife remotely and the entire reproductive cycle could be monitored without capturing the horses.

Assateague was the first to use a completely new approach for monitoring genetics without requiring blood samples from the animals. Assateague was also the first to develop an effective proactive public education program that has been wildly successful for decades. All of the techniques are now used extensively worldwide, but they all started on Assateague back in 1988 under Kirkpatrick’s direction.

As recently as just a few years ago, the size of the wild horse population on Assateague had swelled to around 140, or well north of the target range of 80-100. NPS officials until just recently had been in a “reduction” phase with the contraceptive program, which achieved the desired results. However, with some attrition with the oldest horses in the herd and the contraceptive program resulting in fewer births- just two new foals were added in 2014 and one this year- NPS Resource Management is moving from the reduction phase to now an “adaptive management” phase. From this point on, the results of the year-end pregnancy testing along with the estimated population will determine which, if any, mares will be darted with the contraceptive program.