[Christian Hansen and her carriage horse Oreo going around Central Park]
Christian Hansen (interview): “This is the major leagues of carriage driving here. We have this park that should be a UNESCO World Heritage Site if you ask me. It’s an 843-acre work of art that was designed for us to be in.”
[Carriage wheel and other horse drawn carriages around Central Park]
[A carriage horse being driven in Central Park]
Christian Hansen (interview): “What’s shocking to me is that the Conservancy has taken a position on this. It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a small group of animal rights people and real estate developers who have been trying to ban the carriages for a long time now.”
[A horse pulling a carriage]
Christian Hansen (interview): “The idea that the Conservancy all of a sudden has sort of decided that they want to have fast moving bikes, unlimited e-bikes, e-vehicles, illegally motorized electric pedicabs and to design around that, it’s a dereliction of their duty. Their duty is to preserve Olmstead’s landscape and the landscape includes slow moving horses on the carriage drive, not fast-moving, zippin’ around electric bikes all over the place.”
[A carriage being driven around Central Park as bikes and pedicabs go by]
Christian Hansen (interview): “There are reasons to want to have the horses out of the stables so that those areas can be developed and have certain amounts of affordable housing in them. There’s a lot of money behind the anti-carriage ban campaigns and like I said, it has nothing to do with the welfare of the horses. The horses are fine.”
[A stable in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City surrounded by vacant lots and glass high rise buildings]
[Front of stable]
[Inside of a different stable in Hell’s Kitchen]
Christian Hansen (interview): “But there’s no, I mean look, they’re coming the wrong way. Whole groups of people in the jogging lane. And, but they say that the horses need to be gotten rid of because… Because we’re the safety hazard?”
[A carriage being pulled by a horse in Central Park as bikes and pedestrians pass by]
Betsy Smith (interview): “In May there were two very dangerous incidences, one with a runaway horse that sort of escaped from its handler and another incident several weeks later where two horses charged a group of pedicab operators and there was some physical and personal damage done and it just became obvious that it’s time.”
[Carriage wheel and pedicabs passing by]
Betsy Smith (interview): “The southern part of the park where the horse carriages operate is the most crowded part of the park. It’s where the most tourists are, of course. And just the combination of that dense urban environment and all that’s going on down there and the many people who use the drives just makes the element of having horses and the unpredictability of the horses in the park, it was just time. Time for us to move on.”
[Horse and people walking by]
Edita Birnkrant (interview): “This is just a worldwide trend of the public and people and lawmakers realizing that both for the public safety and for the animal welfare reasons, it’s just no longer appropriate in the 21st century to have horse-drawn carriages in busy urban environments.”
[Carriage being driven into a stable as a cab waits to pass]
Edita Birnkrant (interview): “There’s a network of sanctuaries and rescue homes lined up where all of these horses can just live out the rest of their lives running free as horses are meant to do, grazing on grass, part of a herd. These are herd animals, and they’re denied everything that makes a horse’s life worthwhile.”
[Horse pulling a carriage in Central Park]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.