We Spoke To Jann Arden About Horse Culling

Jann Arden doesn’t keep secrets. Ever since she began her career in 1993, the Alberta native has been wearing her heart on her sleeve and putting it on display on each of the 13 albums she’s released in her 21 year career. Never one to hide her emotions, Jann went as far as naming her greatest hits album Greatest Hurts, and admitting publicly that her brother is serving a lifetime incarceration sentence. It would be easy for Jann to live a sequestered and isolated life on the Canadian West Coast, enjoying her accolades and making new music in a solitary condition. But Jann is upset, and since she doesn’t keep secrets, she wants you to know exactly why.

Every year, the Alberta government allows roughly 200 permits to hunters, farmers and ranchers. These permits allow them to cull from the herds that come through Alberta, which are often as large as 1,000 horses, and do what they will with those animals upon capture. Advocates like Jann are claiming that a majority of these animals are unrightfully being sent to slaughter, and want to ensure that the wild horses are adopted, or at least not treated inhumanely. “They just need to be treated with respect. I know there needs to be some sensibility, but why does the fucking solution have to always be killing something?”

We spoke to Jann Arden while she was in Alberta to find out more about the problem, and if any potential solutions exists. Oh, and we kind of wrote a song, but my lawyer has advised me not to speak about it.

Could you explain the cause to people who may be unfamiliar with it?
The United States is light years ahead of us in how they control their wild horse population. Having said that, what happens in Alberta is that the Albertan government takes it upon themselves to do a strange thing. Basically, the government gave a count that said there are 932 horses, so we have to control the environmental damage they’re doing. They’re going to do this by giving permits to the same freaking guy they give them to every year, who’s not even a rancher. There’s no regulation in place, so they can trap the wild horses, and they can even trap pregnant mares if they wanted to. When these horses are trapped, they’re basically held ransom and people that want to rescue them are charged a lot of money, all of which goes straight to the rancher. Or they’re sent to a slaughterhouse, where they’re killed and sent to Europe to eat. But the thing that we’re up in arms about is that Alberta was built on the backs of horses, the same horses they’re now killing off. And here we are, three months after this so called count, the numbers are so down, so depleted, there are carcasses everywhere. These horses have has such a difficult, horrible winter. We’re wondering now if there’s even 300 horses left in the wild.

What are you trying to accomplish?
There’s a guy named Darrell Glover, who’s such an amazing humanitarian, he’s so ethical. He has a small plane and he took myself and a veterinarian up to show us the plains, and we may have seen 35 horses. So what we’re trying to do is ask the government of Alberta ‘where are you getting your numbers from?’ These horses are in the eastern slopes, that are in the trees and in the bushes. They’re not travelling in packs of 500. Horses are very family oriented, they have herds, they have a leader. They have this patriarchal society. And the government just throws these numbers out.

Do you have any solutions in mind?
There’s a lot of innovation happening around contraception. A friend of mine, Judith, she’s been working with the First Nations people to help with their dog population. It used to be that they would get out of hand and just shoot the dogs, but now with contraception they don’t have to. It’s inexpensive, like $30 dollars a horse. And yes you need trained people, and yes you need people on the ground to be tagging and monitoring which horses have had contraception. But if you have enough time to run around and trap these horses, certainly that manpower could be put to much better use.

Have things improved since you’ve started working on this?
They are now. Because of social media and the pressure of people, the government can see that nobody wants this cull. Albertans are horse people. They have the Calgary Stampede every year. They have a football team, called the Stampeders, and after a touchdown they have this beautiful horse run up and down the field with a flag. They pride themselves on how instrumental a horse was. Back in the frontier days, if a family was starving, the last fucking thing they’d do is eat their horse. And here we are, the government’s just going, ‘yeah hey let’s just round them up,’ without any proper information or any real, solid numbers. I mean, now they’re just sitting there holding their hats in the hands. When people ask them how they get their numbers, they say “we just fly over” – oh really? How exactly do you know which horses you’ve looked at? Is there anyone on the ground tagging them?

So why now? Did you only hear this was happening recently?
I’d heard about it before, I kind of knew it was happening. I was one of the people that was very misinformed, and thought that this was good for the horses, and that surely the government would know how to do this properly. Surely the government would be doing this humanely and with regulations in place. I realized after people who’ve been around horses for 20 years, and they’re the ones telling me it’s a shit show. I’ve actually had a woman, she’s been on the slaughterhouse floor, she’s seen the horse being slaughtered with a live foal falling out onto the slaughterhouse floor.

Ewwww.
Imagine a wild horse that’s been running around free all its life, now sitting shoulder to shoulder in the feedlot. And then sent to slaughter. I think as Albertans, we owe them better than that. I don’t have any horses, I travel 250 days a year. I have 14-acres, I live in a forest. I don’t know enough about horses to ever go that length. These horses need to be with horse people who understand what they need socially and health-wise. That’s not my arena at all.

Where can someone go to find out more about this?
If you go a Facebook group called helpthewildies, you see these poor horses that are in the most decimated 400-500 acres, and they’re going on and on about environmental nuisance. I don’t even fucking like that word nuisance. If the government solution is to always kill, there’s something wrong with humans. Contraception doesn’t hurt anybody.

How big is a horse condom?
Horse condoms are fucking huge, and man is it hard to find the volunteers to get them on.

I guess we should talk about music. What’s your favourite Bieber song?
I don’t even know any Justin Bieber songs, what’s the one that goes “baby baby, baby”?

I think that one is called “Baby”. How about your music, anything new you want to talk about?
I just had a new record come out like a month ago, I tour in the fall, which I’m excited about. I’m doing really well. I’ve been doing this with so many great people for like 22 years at Universal. They’ve been nothing but generous and supportive of me. Usually these things drop off into the dungeon, I’m thrilled with how they’ve still been with me for all these years. Radio has been really good to me. It’s a much different industry that I signed up for all these years ago, so to still be working and enjoying it, and just being excited about meeting new people.

Have you considered writing a song dealing with the horse culling?
If you could give me a few words that rhyme with horse I’ll write song.

Horse, morse, course …
That’s pretty good!

Thanks, but I’m going want a songwriter credit if we keep going.
Talk to a lawyer.

@SlavaP is talking to his lawyer

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