“A group of the world’s last wild horses have returned to their native Kazakhstan after an absence of about 200 years. The seven horses, four mares from Berlin and a stallion and two other mares from Prague, were flown to the central Asian country on a Czech air force transport plane. The wild horses, known as Przewalski’s horses, once roamed the vast steppe grasslands of central Asia, where horses are believed to have been first domesticated about 5,500 years ago,” reports The Guardian:
People are known to have been riding and milking horses in northern Kazakhstan nearly 2,000 years before the first records of domestication in Europe. Human activity, including hunting the animals for their meat, as well as road building, which fragmented their population, drove the horses close to extinction in the 1960s.
Filip Mašek, Prague zoo’s spokesperson, said: “These are the only remaining wild horses in the world. Mustangs are domesticated horses that went wild.”
The horses reintroduced into Kazakhstan are descended from two groups that survived in Munich and Prague zoos….In 2011, Prague zoo was involved in a reintroduction of Przewalski’s horses to Mongolia. The project, which involved nine flights of horses, continued until 2019 when the population stabilised, said Mašek, adding that there were now about 1,500 of the wild horses in Mongolia.
Last year, a baby beaver was born in London, the first beaver birth there in 400 years. And carnivorous plants were reintroduced to English wetlands.
A dog recently discovered a species of mole long thought to be extinct, De Winton’s golden mole. Crocodiles are flourishing in Australia, where they once verged on extinction.
Florida’s manatees have rebounded to their highest number in years. Sea turtles are proliferating, with sea turtle nests tripling in Florida.
The amount of vegetation on the Earth has increased every year for the past 30 years. Most of the world’s forests are growing.
An Asian antelope declared extinct in Bangladesh is making a comeback.
Scientists recently developed genetically-modified bananas to keep the principal variety of banana from being wiped out by a dangerous blight. They also engineered bionic silkworms that spin fibers six times stronger than Kevlar.
A mutant tomato could save harvests around the world.
