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After two centuries of absence, wild horses return to the steppes of Kazakhstan
2024-06-11 09:43:32 / BOTA
Seven Przewalski's horses, the only truly wild animal species in the world, flew to Central Asia from zoos in Europe.
A group of the world's last wild horses have returned to their native Kazakhstan after an absence of nearly 200 years. The seven horses, four mares from Berlin and a stallion and two other mares from Prague, were flown to Central Asia on a Czech Air Force transport plane.
Wild horses, known as Przewalski's horses, once roamed the vast steppe grasslands of Central Asia, where horses are believed to have first been domesticated around 5,500 years ago.
Human activity, including hunting the animals for their meat, as well as road construction, which fragmented their populations, drove the horses to extinction in the 1960s.
“These are the only wild horses left in the world. "Mustangs are domesticated horses that went wild ," said Filip Mašek, spokesman for the Prague Zoo.
The reintroduced horses in Kazakhstan are descended from two groups that survived in the zoos of Munich and Prague.
Originally, eight horses were scheduled to travel, but one horse was grounded before the flight from Prague. For this he had to return to the country's zoo.
"He was a bit dizzy coming back, but he's fine now. These horses must stand for the entire journey – they cannot sit, mainly because their blood needs to circulate properly. It's a 30-hour journey in total and the horses will only survive if they stay to the end,” he said.
"The return of the horses from the Prague Zoo will help increase biodiversity in the region. Horses spread seeds in their droppings, and when they dig up plants, they help water get down into the soil. They also fertilize the steppe with their dung. For me, the purpose of a modern zoo is not only the protection and breeding of endangered species, but it is about returning them to the nature where they belong", continued Mašek, reports "The Guardian".
In 2011, the Prague Zoo was involved in a return of Przewalski's horses to Mongolia. The project, which included nine flights of horses, continued until 2019 when the population stabilized, Mašek said, adding that there were now about 1,500 wild horses in Mongolia.
He further revealed that the plan was to transport a total of 40 horses to central Kazakhstan over the next five years.
This first phase of horse restoration involved the Kazakhstan government's forestry and wildlife committee, the Prague Zoo, Berlin's Tierpark Zoo, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and the Kazakhstan Biodiversity Conservation Society.
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