eight Przewalski horses to be reintroduced to Kazakhstan by Prague and Berlin zoos

They will be able to freely roam the steppe. The Prague Zoological Garden announced on Tuesday March 5 that it would send eight wild horses of an endangered species to a steppe in Kazakhstan in June, as part of a joint reintroduction project with the Berlin Tierpark . In total, the two zoos plan to send at least 40 Przewalski horses to the Altyn Dala region in central Kazakhstan over the next five years.

“On June 3, two planes will take off, one from Prague and the other from Berlin, to take the horses to Arkalyk with stopovers in Istanbul and Baku”, Prague Zoo director Miroslav Bobek told the press. The horses, three stallions and five mares, will be transported by Czech army planes, with the two zoos sending four horses each. The 6,000-kilometer flight is expected to last 15 hours, Czech Army General Jaroslav Falta said. The horses will then be transported by truck from Arkalyk to the Alibi reintroduction center in Altyn Dala.

Przewalski’s horses narrowly avoided extinction thanks to breeding programs in zoos around the world. Prague Zoo launched a project to reintroduction of this species in Mongolia in 2011. Thirty-four horses were sent to this Asian country until 2019, before the pandemic put an end to the project co-funded by zoos around the world. The current world population of Przewalski horses exceeds 2,000 specimens, about half of which live in the wild in Mongolia and China.