Photo Provided Julie Larish of the humane organization Belmont County Hoof and Paw acquaints herself with horses, part of a wild herd in the hills near Ohio 7 at Powhatan Point. More recently, some young horses have been seen on Ohio 7 and drivers are warned to be careful.

POWHATAN POINT — Drivers along Ohio 7 near Powhatan Point are warned to be on the lookout for wild horses that have been wandering onto the highway.

Julie Larish of the humane organization Belmont County Hoof and Paw said most of the sightings have been south of Pipe Creek Road.

“These are the horses that have been in the area for a long time, it’s just we have four young ones that have broken away from the herd and they keep going out onto Ohio 7,” Larish said. “So we have put up barricades just to let the drivers know to slow down in that area and it’s also meant to try to keep the horses from (the road). A lot of times they won’t (cross unfamiliar obstacles). It’s not a secure fence for them, but it is a barricade they might stay behind.

“They’ve been coming down for about three months now, we’ve gotten some reports of them actually starting to go on the road about a month and a half ago, so we took action,” she said. “We had a couple almost get hit by a car and a truck and we finally got to work on the barricade.”

Larish said the Ohio State Highway Patrol authorized them to set up barrels provided by the Ohio Department of Transportation. She said the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department is also aware of the situation.

She said the barriers will likely remain up until either the horses return to the hill permanently or until the four horses can be captured and removed from the area. Larish said there is some potential for domestication.

“These four are very, very, very young, and being that they’re very young, they can be retrainable, so we have a horse trainer who’s going to take them and train them and see if we can get them to ride,” she said. “If not, we will take them to a non-profit sanctuary in Kentucky.”

Drivers who observe a dangerous situation can call Larish at 610-314-5203.

“Let me know if they’re back on the road, or if anybody takes the barricade down,” she said. “We’ve had problems already with the barricade coming down…but I think we’ve got that resolved.”

Larish said the wild horses have been on that hilltop area for close to 15 years. She has been working with the herd since 2013 and there are about 11 other horses around the hill.

“They are all being monitored by our group and some residents up there with the hopes that we can finally get them contained,” Larish said, adding she is confident her group will capture the horses.

“It’s going to be a quiet capture, we’re not going to involve very many people at all, and it’s going to be more getting them used to a certain area that’s going to have some … stud panels up, and then we’ll close those off once we know at what time they’re eating. We are going to be watching them by camera so we know when they’re going in to eat and when they’re not going in to eat,” Larish said. “There’s not going to be any running of the horses or trying to rope the horses.”

Larish said the horses are most active in the late evening and early morning hours.

“During the daytime when it’s hot, they go up and stand (under a tree),” she said. “We don’t anticipate much change through the weather. The only time they might be a little erratic is if there’s a bad storm coming up through the valley.”

“When it comes to calls that we’ve received about horses down on the roadway on Ohio 7, yes, it’s been a regular occurrence, reports of horses on the roadway in that area,” Sgt. Rocky Hise of the Ohio State Highway Patrol St. Clairsville post said. “The advice I would give to motorists is the same I would give to any motorist out on the roadway, especially at night time: concentrate, constantly be aware, put your devices down and assume that an animal’s going to jump at you, especially in the Ohio Valley with all the deer and the wildlife that we have.”

“The patrol’s been really concentrating on that area. There have been wild horses running up and down that area, there always has been,” Chief Deputy James Zusack of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Office said. “Sometimes they get close to the road,but they’ve got them kind of contained to stay on top of that hill right now, they’re also trying to capture some to take them away.”