WHEN APPROACHING A herd of Przewalski’s horses grazing in the open grasslands of Hungary’s Hortobágy National Park, I try to walk like an old person. Not quite weak and frail appearing, but just slow enough to reassure them that I’m not a threat. If they stare at me, ears pointed forward, I know it means: Please don’t come closer. We don’t know who you are and what you want. I wait quietly until their wariness subsides. This herd has never lived with predators, so the horses are more curious than fearful of an unexpected presence in their midst. Eventually, they resume grazing and allow me to move right up to them.

Starting at the edge of the group, I work on identifying each of them. The herd comprises some 270 individuals, bunched together in 30 “harems” — groups within the herd containing one stallion, 5 to 8 mares, and offspring — and about 15 bachelor groups comprising 5 to 7 young and old stallions each. To a lay person, these dun-colored animals, who resemble donkeys more than horses, might all look very similar — stocky, pot-bellied, with thick necks, and short, bristly manes. But I know almost all of them by sight. I have, after all, been monitoring them for 20 years as part of a carefully managed, international effort to bring back this species, which went extinct in the wild in the 1960s. Still, it takes even me a while to tell all of them apart.

When I started this work 20 years ago, the reserve had only about 40 horses, and I’d be done in a few hours. Now, it takes me two-to-three days of continuous work to account for all of them.

I’m keenly aware that this species would be extinct today but for the decades of efforts by fellow conservationists. Thanks to their dedication, there are now about 2,500 to 3,000 Przewalski’s horses living in nature reserves and zoological gardens in 40 countries across Europe and Asia.

With their numbers slowly rebounding, those of us working to save these horses are grappling with a larger question: How can we help them roam free in a world where the human footprint is writ large?

Viola Kerekes, project coordinator for Przewalski’s horses in Hungary’s Hortobágy’s Pentezug Reserve, writes about her work with the animals and an international effort to return the world’s only remaining true wild horse species to the steppes of Central Asia.

Photo by Ondrej Prosicky

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