3 years ago, the last non-domesticated species of horse was reintroduced into a Spanish woodland in the hopes they would act upon the land as wild equines had done for thousands of years.
The Iberian Highlands Rewilding Project (IHRP) is now happy to report that 10 foals have been born since then, as the Przewalski’s horse gradually became accustomed to the scrubby, dryer world in the forest’s beyond Madrid.
Despite originating in the wide open plains of northern China and Mongolia, the Przewalski’s horse was the conservationists’ only chance of seeing a wild equine in Spain.
It’s the only horse found anywhere on Earth that hasn’t interbred with domesticated horses over the last 6,000 years. Once seriously threatened with extinction, captive breeding programs have seen the animal return to pastures across Eurasia.
“The horses are engineers of the forest,” says Pablo Schapira, a team leader at IHRP. “What we want to do is to put back the pieces of the puzzle so that nature can lead the way to a new environment.”
Overly ambitious? Maybe, but then again, the area the IHRP is working in is more than 1.8 million acres, and sometimes called “Empty Spain,” or “La Espana Vacia,” as it’s seen widespread depopulation over the decades. Today, these vast tracks of wild forests and neglected rangeland are at substantial risk of wildfire ever since the natural grazers were displaced, hunted, or driven off.
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The hope is that Przewalski’s horse, together with European bison, deer, and a specially-bred species of wild cattle supposed to take the place of the giant wild bovid that went extinct during the Middle Ages, will be able to control understory growth and reduce both the risk of fires starting and the intensity of fires that do start.
Local rewilding initiatives in Empty Spain and beyond have been given some $200,000 in loans from Rewilding Spain, the national chapter of Rewilding Europe, one of the largest conservation NGOs on the continent.
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Some eco-entrepreneurs are using them to build safari lodges and acquire jeeps, potentially to turn this part of Spain into something that looks a lot more like an American national park than anything else that can be found in Europe.
Wolves, the Critically-Endangered Iberian lynx, and more vultures are planned for future releases into the Empty Spain in order to instill balance in the prey-predator relationship.
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