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)