![The last remaining wild horse, the beautiful Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii) once roamed across the breadth of Europe and Asia, eventually ending up confined to Mongolia, where it was first officially described in 1881 by Nikolai Przhevalsky. Sadly, the population rapidly declined through the 1960s and the last individual was sighted in the wild in 1969, and the Przewalski was declared extinct in the wild. However, all was not lost. The Foundation for the Preservation and Protection of the Przewalski’s Horse, founded in 1977, organised breeding programmes of captive individuals and eventually released a herd of sixteen horses into Mongolia in 1992, and in 1998, thirty-one were released into the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, with the aim of enriching the local biodiversity following the nuclear disaster. Reproduction in the wild was successful, but the Przewalski’s horse never managed to boost its status above Critically Endangered by the IUCN, and today its future is uncertain. In Ukraine, the horses are threatened by poaching, disease and the presence of a large wolf population, and the herd has declined from around 65 individuals in 2003 to between 30 and 40 today. The Przewalski’s horse is the only remaining species of horse never to have been domesticated by man, unlike ‘wild’ horses such as the American Mustang and Australian Brumby. It would be a sad loss if this relic of the ancestors of the domestic horses that we cherish today were to disappear from the wild completely.Ref: Gill (2011) Chernobyl’s Przewalski’s horses are poached for meat. BBC News [link] || Wikipedia [link] || ARKive [link]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp03ioQ9Iq1qkrbaho1_400.jpg)
The last remaining wild horse, the beautiful Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii) once roamed across the breadth of Europe and Asia, eventually ending up confined to Mongolia, where it was first officially described in 1881 by Nikolai Przhevalsky. Sadly, the population rapidly declined through the 1960s and the last individual was sighted in the wild in 1969, and the Przewalski was declared extinct in the wild. However, all was not lost. The Foundation for the Preservation and Protection of the Przewalski’s Horse, founded in 1977, organised breeding programmes of captive individuals and eventually released a herd of sixteen horses into Mongolia in 1992, and in 1998, thirty-one were released into the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, with the aim of enriching the local biodiversity following the nuclear disaster. Reproduction in the wild was successful, but the Przewalski’s horse never managed to boost its status above Critically Endangered by the IUCN, and today its future is uncertain. In Ukraine, the horses are threatened by poaching, disease and the presence of a large wolf population, and the herd has declined from around 65 individuals in 2003 to between 30 and 40 today. The Przewalski’s horse is the only remaining species of horse never to have been domesticated by man, unlike ‘wild’ horses such as the American Mustang and Australian Brumby. It would be a sad loss if this relic of the ancestors of the domestic horses that we cherish today were to disappear from the wild completely.
Ref: Gill (2011) Chernobyl’s Przewalski’s horses are poached for meat. BBC News [link] || Wikipedia [link] || ARKive [link]
Source: Flickr / mikemac29
