As Chinese New Year welcomes the Year of the Horse, Monarto Safari Park is marking a significant conservation milestone. It has been 20 years since the passing of Verita, a Przewalski’s Horse whose life helped change the fate of her species.
Born at Monarto Safari Park, Verita became part of a landmark international reintroduction effort in the mid-1990s, when the species had been declared extinct in the wild.
Species Management Officer Jodi Buchecker remembers the moment clearly.
“In early 1994, I had just started at Monarto Zoo as a trainee zookeeper. It was a very exciting time because we were preparing to send some P horses, as we call them, to Mongolia to be released to the wild,” she said.
“In June, two of our mares and five of the mares from Dubbo were selected to make the big long trek to Mongolia to be released.”
Working alongside Taronga Western Plains Zoo and European conservation partners, Australia transferred seven mares to Takhin Tal, a research station in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.
“At that time, Mongolian Wild Horses, as they’re also known, were classified as extinct in the wild. The last ones sighted in the wild were in 1960,” Ms Buchecker said.
“The horses were sent to the Gobi Desert. It’s a research station called Takhin Tal in the Gobi Desert.”
The landscape they entered was formidable.
“The conditions there were very, very harsh. Very, very cold winters, very, very hot summers, and it’s a very arid landscape,” she said.
“The animals were cared for at the research centre and then they were eventually released out of that research station.”
Verita, later renamed Khaliunaa by Mongolian staff, went on to spend 11 years living in her native landscape.
“One of the mares that we sent to Mongolia, Verita, died in 2006 at 18 years old,” Ms Buchecker said.
“She lived at Takhin Tal for 11 years and foaled four foals.”
Her offspring became part of the foundation of today’s free-roaming Przewalski’s Horse population in Mongolia.
“It was reintroduction efforts by the worldwide zoo community, such as the one that we were involved with, that saw P horses be reassessed to critically endangered in 2008,” Ms Buchecker said.
“And in 2011 they were reclassified again to endangered.”
Today, a population of Przewalski’s Horses exists in the wild once again.
“A population of P horses now exists in the wild in Mongolia once again, thanks to the long-term international collaboration between zoos, conservation organisations and governments,” she said.
Two decades after Verita’s passing, her legacy continues through the horses now roaming the Gobi Desert and through the genetically pure herd at Monarto Safari Park, which remains part of the global conservation breeding program.
As the Year of the Horse begins, Monarto Safari Park is reflecting not only on a single mare’s life, but on what sustained, collaborative conservation can achieve over generations.
Visitors are encouraged to learn more about Przewalski’s Horses and the role South Australia continues to play in securing the future of one of the world’s most remarkable wildlife recovery stories.
