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   It is a sad irony that the Mongolian horse, the last true wild horse surviving today, is found mainly in zoos and reserves around the world.Mongolia (see map) is often described as the "land of the horse". Children learn to ride as young as four or five years old and about half the country's 2.5 million people who are semi-nomadic breed horses. But the animals are domestic. The Mongolian wild horse is known in the West as the Prezewalski horse after the Russian naturalist, Nikolai Przewalski, who first sighted several herds in 1879. In Mongolia it is called takhi. About the size of a pony, takhi are dark yellow-brown, solidly built, with a short back and deep girth. Their heavy, shaggy winter coat turns light and sleek in the summer and their mane is stiff and erect like a zebra. The horse resembles animals in cave drawings and paintings by Stone Age people in Europe, suggesting that in prehistoric times the horse ranged over large parts of Europe as well as Asia. Last century, the habitat of Przewalski's horse was threatened by the encroachment of domestic cattle on its grazing lands and in the 1960s, they disappeared from the Gobi, a vast area in Southern Mongolia At the beginning of the twentieth century, 53 of the horses were captured and brought to Europe. Zoos saved the animal from dying out by breeding them successfully. Today, there are about 1,500 horses in captivity. Some are being kept in large reserves under semi-wild conditions in Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands and Ukraine to prepare them for reintroduction. A global management plan was drafted in 1990 to reintroduce the species to its historic range. The ultimate goal is to reintroduce the Przewalski's horse into secure wild habitat in Mongolia and China in sufficient numbers so it can evolve by natural selection. The UN in partnership with several countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, the United States and Japan, is working with the Mongolian government to help manage the country's protected areas and promote biodiversity conservation. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is funding these efforts through the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Scientists estimate that it will be necessary to protect 30 percent of Mongolia's territory under conservation designations, to maintain current biodiversity. Already, the government has established a protected area system that covers 12 percent of the country. As part of the global effort to protect the planetâs biodiversity, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) administers one of the world's largest conservation agreements-the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES. Adopted in 1973, it became international law two years later. More than 150 governments have ratified the treaty, which offers varying protection to more than 35,000 species of animals and plants, depending on their condition in the wild and the effect that international trade may have on them. CITES bans international commercial trade in species threatened with extinction, such as cheetahs, tigers, the great apes, many tortoises and birds of prey. It also protects other species, which are not threatened, but may be at serious risk unless international trade is strictly regulated.
LEARN MORE how the UN works with its partners around the world to save endangered species. Go to the links at the side of the page. Photo credit: UN |
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