Room
to Roam
WHEN
APPROACHING A herd of Przewalski’s horses
grazing in the open grasslands of Hungary’s
Hortobágy National Park, I try to walk like an
old person. Not quite weak and frail appearing,
but just slow enough to reassure them that I’m
not a threat. If they stare at me, ears pointed
forward, I know it means: Please don’t come
closer. We don’t know who you are and what you
want. I wait quietly until their wariness
subsides. This herd has never lived with
predators, so the horses are more curious than
fearful of an unexpected presence in their
midst. Eventually, they resume grazing and allow
me to move right up to them.
Starting
at the edge of the group, I work on identifying
each of them. The herd comprises some 270
individuals, bunched together in 30 “harems” —
groups within the herd containing one stallion,
5 to 8 mares, and offspring — and about 15
bachelor groups comprising 5 to 7 young and old
stallions each. To a lay person, these
dun-colored animals, who resemble donkeys more
than horses, might all look very similar —
stocky, pot-bellied, with thick necks, and
short, bristly manes. But I know almost all of
them by sight. I have, after all, been
monitoring them for 20 years as part of a
carefully managed, international effort to bring
back this species, which went extinct in the
wild in the 1960s. Still, it takes even me a
while to tell all of them apart.
When
I started this work 20 years ago, the reserve
had only about 40 horses, and I’d be done in a
few hours. Now, it takes me two-to-three days of
continuous work to account for all of them.
I’m
keenly aware that this species would be extinct
today but for the decades of efforts by fellow
conservationists. Thanks to their dedication,
there are now about 2,500 to 3,000 Przewalski’s
horses living in nature reserves and zoological
gardens in 40 countries across Europe and
Asia.
With
their numbers slowly rebounding, those of us
working to save these horses are grappling with
a larger question: How can we help them roam
free in a world where the human footprint is
writ large?
Viola Kerekes, project
coordinator for Przewalski’s horses in Hungary’s
Hortobágy’s Pentezug Reserve, writes about her
work with the animals and an international
effort to return the world’s only remaining true
wild horse species to the steppes of Central
Asia. |
