subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\nDespite living for so long in captivity, Przewalski\u2019s horses haven\u2019t lost their wild streak. \u201cWe are not trying to tame them,\u201d says Barbora Dobi\u00e1\u0161ov\u00e1, ungulate curator at Prague Zoo and head of the European breeding program. \u201cIf you enter an enclosure with Przewalski horse herd…, [the stallion] will always try to get between you and the mares\u201d to defend them, she says. The animals need to be sedated in order for the zookeepers to so much as trim their hooves.<\/p>\n
On the Golden Steppe, or Kazakhstan\u2019s Altyn Dala State Nature Reserve (altyn dala <\/i>means \u201cgolden steppe\u201d in Kazakh), these horses are once again galloping and grazing, filling the hole they left in the ecosystem, explains Stephanie Ward of the Frankfurt Zoological Society. Ward serves as the international coordinator of the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, a conservation partnership with the government of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go into the steppe, it\u2019s like you\u2019re in a sea of grass. And at first, it just all looks the same,\u201d she says. But that sea is teeming with life. Birds build their nests in the brush, and burrowing animals tunnel beneath it. Large herbivores such as horses and antelope have historically kept this grass short, which prevented it from drying out and allowed other animals to access the ground beneath, Ward explains. Their dung fertilized the ground, and their grazing promoted carbon sequestration in the soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrasslands need to be grazed,\u201d Ward says. By the 2000s, however, many of the steppe\u2019s large herbivores were gone or critically endangered. That included not only the Przewalski\u2019s horse but also a wild ass called the kulan and the saiga antelope. \u201cThe absence has caused this slow degradation of the ecosystem. The species of plant get fewer and fewer, and they get less and less resilient,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
But the grazers are coming back, thanks to conservation efforts that go beyond the Przewalski\u2019s horse. Kazakhstan\u2019s saiga antelope, with their charming, trunklike nose, numbered only 21,000 in 2003. Today more than one million are spread across the nation. Just last year the International Union for Conservation of Nature changed their status from \u201ccritically endangered\u201d to \u201cnear threatened.\u201d Kulans have also been reintroduced periodically since 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n
A sedated Przewalski\u2019s horse is prepared for transport.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Now it\u2019s Przewalski\u2019s horses\u2019 turn. Captive breeding programs have allowed their numbers to soar from as low as 30 to 40 individuals in the mid-20th century to about 2,500 today. About half of these horses now live in the wild, thanks to reintroductions in Mongolia, China and Russia starting in the 1980s. Kazakhstan, however, had experienced less luck\u2014an attempted 2003 reintroduction to a national park was not successful. The animals also didn\u2019t have the necessary legal protections in the country because they had been absent from the ecosystem for so long.<\/p>\n
Przewalski\u2019s horse was added to Kazakhstan\u2019s list of protected species in 2021, paving the way for the wild horses\u2019 return. In early June 2024 seven of the animals were flown in from the Prague Zoo and a zoo in Berlin on military aircraft. After stops in Istanbul, and Baku, Azerbaijan, they arrived at a small Soviet-era airport in Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, which had to be reopened for the occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n
Przewalski\u2019s horses are transported to a reintroduction center in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
From there, it was a seven-hour drive to the reintroduction center, where enclosures had been hastily rebuilt after catastrophic flooding hit the region in April. The flooding \u201cdestroyed 80 percent of each enclosure\u2014I would say we actually [had] to build from zero,\u201d says Albert Salemgareyev of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan. The flooding also washed out the roads that would be needed to transport building materials and, ultimately, the horses. \u201cI nearly said, \u2018No, we can\u2019t do this this year.\u2019 But and then I just looked how much [work] we actually had done in preparation, and I was like, \u2018Okay, we will try to do our best.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the horses\u2014named Ypsilonk, Zeta II, Zorro, Tessa, Sary, Wespe and Umbra\u2014arrived as planned at their rebuilt enclosures, where they will spend much of the next year acclimating to their new environment. There Salemgareyev and his colleagues will keep an eye on them as they adjust, especially during the first winter.<\/p>\n\n\n
Two reintroduced Przewalski\u2019s horses in an enclosure at the reintroduction center in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The horses have a lot to learn. In the zoos, they were provided with food, water and shade, something that they will now have to find on their own, Salemgareyev explains. Initially, the team was worried that the mares from Germany were not drinking water, but they have since adjusted. \u201cThe horses now look really good,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Come this time next year, the horses will hopefully be galloping free in the steppe, encouraging diverse plants and animal species to proliferate along with them. The conservation team will follow their movements with tracking collars and plans to introduce about 30 to 40 more horses to the area in the coming years.<\/p>\n
And in zoos around the world, curators such as Dobi\u00e1\u0161ov\u00e1 and Ryder will continue to help grow the population and maintain its genetic diversity. \u201cThe Przewalski\u2019s horse was a notable example\u2014one of the first\u2014of a species that was saved by managed care and breeding in zoos,\u201d says Ryder, who is a coordinator for the breeding program in North America. Ryder has worked to preserve the species at the San Diego Zoo since the 1970s. His team was the first to clone a Przewalski\u2019s horse in 2020, and a second cloned foal was born just last year. Ryder says that both were cloned from a cell line preserved in 1980 from a stallion named Kuporovich, who had genetic diversity that had likely been lost in the current population.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal of having them in zoos [is] to restore them to the wild,\u201d Ryder says. \u201cThat should be something that we aspire to as a general principle. What we want to try to do is preserve the legacy of life on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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