Endangered Przewalski horses

Had the chance to visit the Calgary Zoo Ranch yesterday afternoon, just south of the city. The Zoo ranch is a 320-acre captive breeding facility at DeWinton, and is not open to the public. The ranch also serves as a Zoo quarantine and holding area for everything from elk to zebras.

"The horses at the Calgary Zoo ranch ain’t never been rode – and they ain’t never going to be. They’re Przewalski horses, the world’s only truly wild breed, and the Zoo’s mandate is to keep them wild. Also known as Asian horses, Mongolian Wild horses or Takhi, they were native to Asia and became extinct in the wild. Their captive breeding is now monitored under a worldwide Species Survival Plan, an international program that controls the breeding of most zoo animals today. All the estimated 1,500 Przewalskis today are descended from 13 ancestors captured in Mongolia during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Today, at least 60 Przewalski horses live on their own at Hustain Huruu, a Mongolian steppe area. Przewalskis are virtually untameable, suspicious and very difficult to manage compared to modern domesticated breeds." From article by Tyler Trafford in Canadian Country Cowboy magazine.

www.canadiancowboy.ca/features/the_zoo_ranch.html