With the imminent arrival of 150 Przewalski’s horses to the Kazakh steppes, the future of the world’s last non-domesticated horse species is poised to bolt.

Following up on a successful introduction of 5 mares and 2 stallions from Berlin and Prague, Hungary’s Minister of Agriculture István Nagy announced the country would be shipping 150 horses to Kazakhstan in order to safeguard the animal’s future from disease and inbreeding.

Around 6,000 years ago at an unspecified place on the Eurasian Steppe, of which Kazakhstan makes up a major component, human beings domesticated the horse. It changed history forever, but not more so than for the ancient residents of Kazakhstan and related topographies who used them to roam, trade, raid, and conquer for millennia.

From that first day until now, all individual species interbred themselves more or less out of existence with the exception of Przewalski’s horse, which is why its return is so exciting.

Kazakhstan has become something of a conservation and rewilding champion among low and middle-income countries. It has been in the process of restoring major members of its ungulate populations, including the saiga antelope, Bukhara deer, and Przewalski’s horse.

It even plans to reintroduce the tiger by welcoming members of a subspecies related to the local “Turanian” tiger which went extinct over 70 years ago. In the fall of 2023, two cats from the Netherlands arrived in the large Illy-Balkhash Nature Reserve, and this year another 5 are expected from Russia.

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For the Przewalski’s horses, the seven individuals transferred from Berlin and Prague arrived at the Altyn Dala Reserve in Kazakhstan’s Kostanay region. The incoming 150 will be located across the country.

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Hungary sits at the Western terminus of the Eurasian steppe, and takes its name from a people who emerged from its grasslands, the Huns.

It’s fitting then that it should be an ancestral relative that offers the Kazakhs this amazing opportunity to restore a quintessential figure to the grasslands—the wild horse.