THE WORLD'S LAST REMAINING WILD HORSES

Описание к видео THE WORLD'S LAST REMAINING WILD HORSES

(10 Jun 2012) LEADIN
Hungary's Hortobagy National Park has the largest Asian Wild Horse population outside Mongolia.
The Asian wild horse is the only truly wild horse remaining in the world.
STORYLINE:
Running free - Asian wild horses in Hungary's Hortobagy National Park.
Also known as the Przewalski horse, the Asian wild horse was first described scientifically in the late 19th century by the Russian explorer Nikolai Przewalski.
These horses once freely roamed the steppe along the Mongolia-China border.
The native population declined in the 20th century due to habitat loss and hunting for its meat.
By the 1960's the wild population in Mongolia had died out. The last herd was sighted in 1967 and the last individual horse two years later. Expeditions after this failed to locate any horses and the species was designated "extinct in the wild" for more 30 years.
Since 1985, conservation efforts have enjoyed huge successes, seeing the species downgraded from "extinct in the wild" to "critically endangered."
One such conservation programme is carried out on the great Hungarian Puszta.
The Hortobagy puszta is the largest central European steppe region extending over 100,000 hectares. Most of the puszta is occupied by salt steppe including small marshes that are very similar to the original land of the Przewalski horses in Mongolia.
In the mid 90s, the national park gave 2500 hectares of grassland to the international Przewalski horse project, which is controlled by the zoo of Cologne in Germany.
The park wanted to bring back large grazers to the original steppe region, where the now extinct tarpan and aurochs ponies once roamed free.
The Hungarians have multiple aims: long-term preservation of their Puszta, the creation of a healthy population of the Przewalski's horses under nearly natural conditions and helping the already existing horse reintegration programme in Mongolia.
Kristin Brabender is the Przewalski horse project manager of the national park. A German biologist, she came to Hortobagy from Cologne to study the Przewalski horses in 2008.
She says the conditions here are prefect for breeding the world's last wild horses.
The horses are observed and monitored continuously by researchers and a wealth of knowledge about their social behaviour, organisation and group dynamics has been gained.
"All of our horses can be identified individually. We have a register for all of them, we make photos, portraits, photos of both sides of the horse. We count the stripes on the legs. We make our own personal notes about the personality of the horse, the way of movement. Maybe they have special postures, how they like to move, how they like to stand, to graze. We can identify all of them."
However, the great distance from Central Europe to Mongolia and the harsh climate of the Hungarian Puszta in the long winters does not make it easy for biologists to study the horses in the wild.
According to Brabender, the closest village is ten km (6.2 miles) away from the herd. In winter cars cannot cross the terrain and temperatures can be as low as -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit). Brabender says her and her colleagues have to walk to the Puszta to continue studying the horses.
It's something Brabender does with little hesitation.
Brabender says it's vital that come rain or shine, researchers are monitoring 24/7:
"Each day one of us is out here and we trying to be as precise as possible with the birth dates. There are some very sad cases of foals that are killed by stallions. You only have the chance to find the dead foals if you check them every day."

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