World’s Last Truly Wild Horses Are Roaming The Kazakh Steppes Again
- Jun 16
- 2 min read
It is thanks to a reintroduction programme that aims to return the species to its ancient habitats.
Five Przewalski’s horses - one stallion and four mares - are taking their first steps on the plains of the Altyn Dala region in central Kazakhstan, having been reintroduced from zoos in Prague and Munich. It's a powerful reminder of the importance of such breeding programmes - the Przewalski’s horse is considered to be the world’s last truly wild horse species. In contrast with the American mustang and the Australian brumby, which are feral horses descended from domesticated animals.
Most of the global population of Przewalski’s horses live in Mongolia and China, but last year, the horse was reintroduced to Kazakhstan through the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, which also steered the latest release. The plan is to transport a total of 40 horses to central Kazakhstan over the next five years.
The wild horses once roamed the vast steppe grasslands of central Asia, where horses are believed to have been first domesticated about 5,500 years ago. People are known to have been riding and milking horses in northern Kazakhstan nearly 2,000 years before the first records of domestication in Europe.
There is every likelihood that the Kazakh reintroduction will be successful as Prague zoo was also involved in a reintroduction of Przewalski’s horses to Mongolia in 2011. The project, which involved nine flights of horses, continued until 2019 when the population stabilised, and there are now about 1,500 of the wild horses in Mongolia.
The Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, which has also reintroduced the saiga antelope to the Kazakh steppes, won an Earthshot prize in 2024 worth £1m ($1.2m), with the funds to be used to help scale-up their project and to help "repair" the planet.
