Fell Ponies and Fossil Cycads
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I did my evening pony chores early so I could go on a tour of what was at one time Fossil Cycad National Monument. The parallels between this lost treasure and Fell Ponies on the fells of Cumbria were hard to miss.
Fossil Cycad National Monument was formed to protect a site here in the Black Hills of South Dakota where fossilized cycadeoids, an extinct order of plants on which dinosaurs once feasted, were commonly found on the surface. The monument existed in name only, and just between 1922 and 1957, because most of the fossils had been removed from the site prior to the monument’s creation. So complete was the removal of the fossils that my friends Bruce and Linda Murdock who have ranched adjacent to the monument for nearly fifty years have only once found a fossil cycad on their place. The monument’s namesake is gone, making the monument unneeded.
Oddly the principal proponent of Fossil Cycad National Monument was also the person who is usually blamed for the monument’s demise. George Wieland homesteaded the land and donated it to the federal government for the purpose of the monument. At the same time, he also removed the greatest number of fossils from the site, most of which are now at Yale University’s Peabody Museum where he worked. When it was widely understood that there were no longer fossil cycads at the monument named for them, the monument was officially deauthorized.
Linda Murdock holding a fossil cycad they found on their ranch adjacent to the former national monument.
I see parallels between the monument that’s missing its namesakes and the fells in Cumbria that are losing their Fell Ponies. As National Park Service paleontologist Vincent Santucci has written about the ‘case of paleontological resource mismanagement,’ “I get a chance to go out to classrooms … and whenever we talk about [Fossil Cycad National Monument], there's sort of a disbelief that we've actually lost a unit of the National Park Service. We've all sort of been cheated the opportunity to get out and experience and learn about this remarkable resource that at one point stood at the threshold of becoming a national monument. So we need to think hard about ways to promote stewardship and preservation of these nonrenewable resources so that we don't see something like this happen again.” (1) In the Fell Pony community, some people use similar words about stewardship and preservation of a unique resource when they talk about Fell Ponies on their native fells and the threats to their continued presence there.
On a somewhat humorous note, there is also a terminology parallel between Fell Ponies and fossil cycads. Sometimes fossil cycads are referred to, incorrectly, as petrified pineapples. I immediately thought of Fell Ponies being, incorrectly, referred to as mini Friesians.
I am hopeful that there is a sufficient drumbeat in support of Fell Ponies remaining on the fells that those hills won’t lose their namesake ponies the way Fossil Cycad National Monument lost its namesake specimens. There is such value to being able to view a resource on its native land, rather than in some remote museum or stable.
Zimny, Michael. “Fossil Cycad: The National Monument That Wasn’t,” blog post, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, 8/12/20, www.sdpb.org
© Jenifer Morrissey, 2020
For more about Fell Ponies, see my book Fell Ponies: Observations on the Breed, the Breed Standard, and Breeding, available internationally by clicking here or on the book cover.
