Three Moments from the Return of the Wild Horses

Photo: Ami Vitale

Last year the very first transport of Przewalski’s horses from Europe to the Golden Steppe in central Kazakhstan was not without problems. However, these were completely dwarfed by this year’s ones, especially the largest one. On Monday we still had about fifteen minutes to go to the Kbely Airport when Wisky, the stallion, broke out of his crate and started running among cars on the Prague Ring Road. Fortunately, with the help of Police, we managed to catch him very quickly and transport him to the reserve enclosure at the zoo; however, I have no doubts that the pictures of the stallion running on the highway reached a huge amount of people thanks to the tabloids. I was not happy about this, on the other side one day later in Kazakhstan I got congratulations that our project finally had a fair amount of publicity.

Even the flight with the horses from Prague to Arkalyk was not without problems, but in the end, we safely transported them to the destination – one stallion and two mares on the plane of the Czech Army that flew from Prague, and four mares on the plane that loaded them in Debrecen, Hungary. On Tuesday evening we released these seven Przewalski’s horses into two acclimatization enclosures. The number of wild horses in the Golden Steppe thus increased to fourteen. In the picture Galvan, the young stallion, is darting out the transport crate.

Photo:  Oliver Le Que, Zoo Praha

Releasing newly brought horses into the acclimatization enclosures was a significant event, but the truly historic event occurred a day later, on Wednesday evening. At that time, the reintroduction centre workers disconnected the fence of the acclimatization encloser where the stallion Zorro with five mares was staying. All these Przewalski’s horses we transported to the Golden Steppe from Prague and Berlin last year, and after one year of acclimatization the time came for them to run free. Together with abovementioned Ami Vitale and the cameraman of Czech TV we, hidden in grass nearby, recorded how the wild horses ran across the Golden Steppe for the first time after hundreds of years. It was a breathtaking sight!

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo