Portugal´s wild horses face extinction
A breed of wild horses which runs free in the serras of north-eastern Portugal could disappear over the next few decades.
Today there are only 1,600 of the small but hardy mountain-living garrano horses left in Portugal, 95 per cent of them roaming wild in the hills around Arga, Amarela, Gerês and Cabreira.
Numbers of the breed are dwindling because of a reduction in their natural habitat and because of an increase in wolves which prey on the young foals.
“Over a half of the foals are killed by wolves,” said Jose Leite, of the Vieira do Minho Garrano Horse Breeders Association (ACERG).
The struggle to protect the small and hardy species is constant according to Jose Leite, who added that the number of these horses was “falling so rapidly that, at any time over the next few years, the breed could disappear altogether”.
Over the last three years the number of foals registered by ACERG, founded in 1990, stands at around 600, of which only 300 end up reaching adulthood.
The breed, which was not officially recognised until 1993, is distinguished by its chestnut brown colour, with males standing at an average height of 1.30 metres and females at 1.28 metres.
Similar to but larger than the UK’s Dartmoor ponies, the breed is well equipped to survive tough mountainous weather conditions found in the northern hills, where it can negotiate the rugged and rocky terrain thanks to its strong, muscular legs.
The pint-sized horses are believed to be the descendants of prehistoric horses such as the Equus Caballus which roamed the northern Iberian peninsular in the Pleistocene period around one million years ago.
Another problem is that the horse only has one foal a year with the maximum life expectancy of the breed being around 30 years.
The breed almost disappeared at the start of the 20th century but in 1945, thanks to state intervention, 21 garranos in captivity were selected and freed into the wild in the Serras Amarela and Geres, with the objective of creating a reserve for them.
In 1970 the Peneda-Gerês Natural Park was created with the aim, in part, to protect the last wild group of garranos in existence.
In 1994 the breed was classified by the European Union as a “breed under threat” and registration began of all remaining horses.
Source: TheResident