Today I am beginning a new blog about endangered species and ecosystems. I wanted to take a little different approach with many of the stories, however, focusing on the ones that show it is entirely possible to save species and places, even when most people have written them off. Such stories are powerful proof of anthropologist Margaret Mead's famous dictum "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has". 

Many stories are excerpted from my book: 100 Under 100 The Race to Save the World's Rarest Living Things, which you can see here: http://browseinside.harpercollins.ca/index.aspx?isbn13=9781443404280

Pzrewalski’s Horse Equus ferus

Only two species of wild horse survived into modern times, both living in central Asia. (Zebras, onagers, and asses, though members of the equine family, aren’t considered “horses”, while mustangs and  other “wild” varieties are feral animals descended from escaped domestic horses.). One of them, the historically abundant tarpan, lived on the steppe grasslands of southern Russia. It was hunted to extinction for its meat in the late 19th century. The other is Pzrewalski’s horse (pronounced “shuh-vall-ski’s”).
The only wild ancestor of the domestic horse alive today, Pzrewalski’s horse has a slightly different genetic makeup than the current domestic species, although the two can still mate and produce fertile offspring. It was named for Nicholai Pzrewalski, a Russian geographer/explorer of Polish ancestry who noted the unique horse in 1879 as he passed through China on his way to Tibet as part of an expedition for Alexander the Second.

It’s thought the species once lived on grasslands throughout eastern Europe and Asia, from Germany across the steppes of Russia to Mongolia and China. This stocky, little horse -it weighed only about 300 kilograms and was just 13 hands or 132 centimetres high at the shoulder- with its golden-brown coat, long black tail and stiff black mane like a Mohawk haircut, lived in small groups of up to ten, called harems. It was the quintessential patriarchal arrangement: one dominant male bred with all the breeding age females. Bullied by the alpha stallion, other males didn’t get to breed. By the time Pzrewalski saw the species in the late 19th century, its numbers were already thinning, the victim of meat hunting, pressure from agriculture, and competition with domestic grazing animals. It would survive on the vast Asian plains for less than a century longer.
In the late 1960's the very last Pzrewalski’s horse in the wild died in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. But that wasn’t the end of it’s story. Seventy years earlier a small number of the horses were collected for zoos around the world. The process of capturing such high-spirited animals was  difficult. Foals provided the best “return on investment” because they were still young and would live a long time in a zoo environment. Often captured at the expense of the rest of the harem, which would be shot, foals were left undefended, confused and more easily taken by barbaric collectors.
Ironically, these captive animals would ultimately save the Pzrewalski’s horse as a species. But extinction threatened even the early captive horses. Spread amongst zoos and collections across in the globe, there was no single herd large enough to effectively increase the population. To make matters worse, an early group of captive animals in the United States didn’t survive and another important herd living in the Ukraine was shot by German soldiers during their occupation of the country during Word War II. By 1945 about thirty captive Pzrewalski’s horses survived around the world. Only thirteen of these were capable of breeding.
In 1959 new breeding programs were established in Europe and the United States. These efforts were coordinated through the use of an international studbook to keep track of which animals bred with which. By the mid-1970s there were 250 Pzrewalski’s horses living in captivity, despite passing through a genetic bottleneck of just thirteen breeding animals a few decades before. Every Pzrewalski’s Horse in existence today can thank the contribution made by that baker’s dozen of ancestors. It was a very close call.
In 1992, a program to re-introduce Pzrewalski’s horses back into the wilds of Mongolia was begun. It was a success. The species is now protected across its range. Today there are over 300 of these wild horses running free in three grassland reserves in Mongolia. Although it is still critically endangered, Pzrewalski’s horse is no longer listed as “Extinct in the Wild”. Another 2000 or so live in zoos and breeding facilities throughout the world.