First wild horses graze in the mountains on the border of the Czech Republic with Austria. More will follow them
First wild horse mares were transported today by conservationists to the mountains on the Czech border with Austria. The animals, captured in the European Serengeti reserve in the former military training area of Milovice near Prague, joined the back-bred aurochs that have been inhabiting the site since the turn of this year.
The new reserve was established on private plots of land and is used for research purposes and for restoring the local ecosystem. “We plan to transport more wild horses in the next few weeks. It will depend on the weather as it is not advisable to transport wild animals at excessively high temperatures,” stated Dalibor Dostal, director of the conservationist organisation European Wildlife, which founded the large ungulate reserve in Milovice in cooperation with scientists in 2015.
Thanks to grazing, reserves for large ungulates succeed in increasing the numbers of rare species by hundreds or even thousands of per cent. For example, the numbers of seedlings of the rarest flower in the Milovice reserve, the star gentian, have risen by 5,553 per cent, and the numbers of the most-endangered local butterfly, mountain Alcon blue, have increased by 1,700 per cent. Moreover, scientific studies have proven that pasture ecosystems of large ungulates bind up to 50% more carbon than forests do.
Funds for the wild horses in the Novohradske Mountains were provided by JRD company using the proceeds of a fund-raising concert it organized.
Photo: Jan Kurz
