Is there hope for the future of China’s endangered wild horses in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region? The wild horses are now down to only 200 in number, the only survivors of their species to carry the genes of the earliest horses on earth.

Yes, says Professor Gu Jinghe, a zoologist with the Xinjiang Ecological and Geographical Research Center and director of the Wild Animal Protection Association of China. The Forestry Department of China established a Wild Horses Breeding and Researching Center in 1986. A major task of the center – which currently has 115 wild horses at its facility some 45 kilometers (28 miles) to the west of Jemusar county Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. – is to breed wild horses and release them back to nature.

Professor Gu acknowledged that the road for the wild horse program "is long and full of hardship." On re-entering the wild, newly-released horses face a strange environment with bitter cold, snowstorms, and hunger and potential threats from livestock and wolves. Nevertheless, Professor Gu said, over time they will again establish themselves in the free living style of their ancestors.

The center’s first batch of 27 wild horses was released in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region on August 28, 2001. Before that date, the horses that had once lived in the wild as descendants of the eohippus, the earliest horses on the earth, had been gone from Xinjiang’s desert pastures for over 100 years.

By the end of 19th century, wild horses in this westernmost region of China began to disappear from excessive poaching and the deterioration of the local environment and wandered away to foreign lands. Eighteen of the wild horses successfully introduced into the program came from Britain, Germany and United States.

The Chinese government is making efforts to protect other endangered species. Fifteen species including pandas and wild horses are formally listed in the Five-year program for protecting national wild species and habitats formulated by the Chinese government in 2000. The seven largest projects to rescue animals and return them to their native habitats include ones for pandas, the red ibis, Chinese alligators, Hainan deer, elks, Tibetan antelopes as well as the wild horses.

With abundant natural resources, China has successfully bred the world largest elk species in their original habitat, in a marsh of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The elks’ population has reached more than 330. As for pandas, China has succeeded in breeding 12. Tracks of the northeast tigers and south China tigers have been found in the northwest and north of China.

According to an official of State Forestry Administration, China will focus on protection projects for 15 species including wild horses, pandas, the red ibis, and Tibetan antelopes. Some 32 other projects call for the protection and conservation of marshes, particularly the headstreams of rivers and the ecological system of the impoverished Western area.

Publicity and education about environmental protection has also made the average person more aware, and increasingly ordinary people are stepping in to prevent trapping and poaching of valuable and rare species.

(Xinhua News Agency February 15, 2002, translated by Wang Qian for china.org.cn)