Wild Inside the National Zoo Saving the Last Wild Horses

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00:00 [music]

00:07 Here at the Conservation Biology Institute, we save species from all over the world.

00:11 This is a special place. It's not like all the horse farms that are all around it

00:16 in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

00:18 [music]

00:22 [music]

00:36 [music]

00:37 Hey girls.

00:38 Where's everybody? Everybody in here? Huh? Hi ladies.

00:44 How you doing this morning, Sherry?

00:48 Every morning I come to work with some of the rarest species in the world.

00:52 All of the animals here are either endangered or extinct in the wild.

00:55 Many times not that much is known about them. I might be the person that

01:01 knows the most about them in this country because I am the one that's worked with them the most.

01:05 Are you ready for some breakfast? What did you do to your bunk feeders?

01:14 They're supposed to be in a line.

01:16 Scimitar horned oryx are from North Africa.

01:18 [sound of a tractor]

01:23 They are extinct in the wild.

01:24 Dama gazelle are from North Africa.

01:29 There are less than 300 of them left in the wild.

01:35 Elves deer are native to Burma and Thailand and there are less than 2,000 of those left in the wild.

01:43 In the years that I've worked here I've probably seen 45 or 50 births.

01:49 Of all of those births probably Christine the Szwarski's horse is one of the most special.

01:54 Christine is the first Szwarski horse born through artificial insemination ever

02:00 so it was very important that she was successful.

02:04 Christine's birth involved 21 days of monitoring her mother 24/7

02:11 from the back of a van parked outside the barn and she had her on a Friday evening at about 9 15

02:18 and she had her in 10 minutes.

02:20 Before I could even call the vet staff and say she's having it it was on the ground.

02:25 One of my first calls was to Buddha the scientist that did the artificial insemination

02:31 that created Christine.

02:32 As soon as I saw Dolores's number I was saying did it happen and she said yes she's here and

02:40 doing well.

02:41 I don't show much emotions but that day I did show it was beautiful.

02:45 Anytime you're working with endangered species the goal is to have a healthy

02:50 self-sustaining population.

02:52 Our first line of defense is natural reproduction when natural breeding fails artificial

02:58 insemination comes to rescue.

02:59 The Szwarski's horse went extinct in the wild in the late 60s thanks to animals and zoos

03:06 that were as part of the breeding program we've been able to grow the population and

03:10 reintroduce them in Mongolia.

03:12 The Szwarski's horse is the only truly wild horse left in the world.

03:19 They were never domesticated nobody ever put a halter on them they've not been ridden.

03:23 They're much more intense like if they're going to have a reaction it's sort of an all or

03:29 nothing.

03:29 Their behavior is still very very herd oriented they really like to stick together in a group

03:35 they don't like being by themselves.

03:37 When I work with Christine I keep in the back of my mind that she is a wild animal she

03:42 needs to be part of a herd so I treat her like I do the rest of the herd.

03:46 Christine's a typical yearling she's very curious likes to use her mouth to kind of

03:52 like check everything out taste it and she's pretty much the darling of the herd.

03:58 Christine will never see Mongolia she wouldn't know how to survive out in the wild but she

04:03 is very genetically important to the species.

04:06 The current estimate of wild Szwarski's horse is about 500 animals.

04:13 The success we have had in artificial insemination is just a starting point for our ability to

04:20 breed these animals.

04:21 It may be possible in the near future to breed a mare in Mongolia using a stallion in Virginia

04:29 without moving that stallion from here.

04:33 Christine she keeps reminding me of what it's going to look like in the future and we hope

04:41 that we can repeat a lot of this to help preserve the species for generations to come.

04:47 [Music]

04:55 [Music]

05:09 you

05:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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