The Horse

by Wendy Williams

  Radnetter stressed to me the importance of patience—the same lesson stressed by Kris Kokal and by Karen Murdock. In particular, he said, it’s essential to form a strong bond that’s never breached. The horse cannot lose faith in his rider. It’s this trust that makes the stallions amenable to the exercises they undergo.

  Radnetter was not the first Lipizzan trainer to talk about the importance of this bond. In his 1965 book My Dancing White Horses, Alois Podhajsky discussed how strong the connection can be. Once when he was riding his horse along the Danube, the animal stumbled and fell into the swiftly flowing river. Podhajsky, who jumped off rather than go in with him, stood on the riverbank and watched his horse float away. The horse didn’t seem to know what to do. Without much hope, Podhajsky called the stallion’s name. “My voice worked wonders,” he wrote. “Bengali lifted his head, neighed feebly, and struggled mightily against the current in an effort to reach me on the bank.” The successful effort left Podhajsky rejoicing in the strength of the bond.

  Later, Radnetter introduced me to his own three stallions. The moment they heard their rider’s voice, two of the stallions, stabled next to each other, lifted their heads from their hay and poked their noses out of their stall doors. At their response, Radnetter beamed.

  Next we visited his other stallion, stabled farther away, off by himself, in a quiet place out of the limelight.

  “This is my ‘autistic’ horse,” he told me. He had a smile on his face.

  I asked him what he meant.

  “When we go away from here to perform anywhere, he tries to hide by putting his head under my jacket. He doesn’t like strangers or new experiences and he can get quite upset.”

  “Why do you keep him, then?” I asked.

  Radnetter looked shocked.

  “Well,” he said, “he’s my horse.”

  10

  THE REWILDING

  Only the wind can ride you now.

  —BAGI, hero of the Mongolian film Khadak, to his companion horse as he returns him forever to the Mongolian plains

  What do we owe to these horses who have traveled across time with us, who have carried us across the North American plains and the Asian steppes, who have plowed our fields and helped feed us, and who have provided us with profoundly moving aesthetic pleasure? As our own human population grows, our world seems to be getting smaller. Now that we don’t need them any more for their horsepower, do horses still have a place in our lives? What place should that be? And how can we pay them back for everything they’ve given us?

  To find out more about the future of the horse, I traveled to Mongolia, where horses reign supreme. Most horse people I know care deeply about their animals, regardless of their particular style of horsemanship. The first person who ever told me to be kind to a horse was a grizzled cowboy who’d spent so much time in the saddle that he had to wear a hernia belt. “Be nice to this horse,” he told me, while saddling my mount and looking up at the steep Rocky Mountain cliffs where we were about to ride. “He’s going to keep you alive. He’s your friend. You need him up there.” Every once in a while, though, this caring reaches genuinely heroic levels.

  Long before I began thinking about writing this book, I read about the rewilding of the Przewalski’s horse and was deeply moved by the decades-long dedication of a few of the volunteers who had made this happen, including a key Dutch couple, Inge and Jan Bouman. I had to go to Amsterdam for a scientific conference several years ago and took the opportunity to invite Inge to lunch in Rotterdam, near her country home.

  We met in a busy café. It was a thoroughly twenty-first-century restaurant in a thoroughly modern city that’s been almost completely rebuilt after the destruction of World War II. In the United States, that war seems like ancient history, but there are still plenty of Europeans alive who, when very young, experienced this nightmare firsthand. In Europe, people talk about the agony of this conflagration as though it happened yesterday. The cities may have been rebuilt, but the memories live on.

  By the time I met Inge for lunch, I had become somewhat accustomed to this, but I wasn’t prepared for the tale she was about to tell me. It would turn out that the motivation for Inge and her husband, Jan, to rewild the horses had a great deal to do with their dreadful experiences during the war. In the late 1930s, Inge’s parents were working in Malaysia for a Dutch company. When the war broke out, the family was interned in a Japanese prison camp. Inge passed much of her childhood staring through barbed-wire fences. After the war, she returned to the Netherlands but never felt she belonged. Her culture was the culture of prison camp survivors, rather than of any particular nationality. Children from all around the world had been her friends. As an adult, she became a child psychologist, dedicating herself to the care of abused and neglected children.

  Jan, Inge told me, was the son of a wealthy businessman and had lived out his prewar childhood in the Netherlands under the despotic reign of an unhappy stepmother. At night, he managed to escape the woman’s ire by sleeping in the barn. His pony was his comforter and companion. The equine made the boy feel so much less alone and frightened. For the rest of his life, ponies would hold a special place in his heart.

  By the 1940s, Bouman had become a businessman, like his father before him. When the Nazis marched into Amsterdam, he experienced the misery and fear of the war firsthand, as did all city residents. Additionally, he was responsible for the care and protection of many employees and their families.

  Fast forward to well beyond the end of the war, when his special bond with ponies and his protective nature would combine. Most of Europe’s zoos had been devastated. Animals were either abandoned in their cages to die or let loose to fend for themselves in bombed-out cities, often to be eaten by starving people. Zoo populations were severely reduced. Among the species almost eradicated was the Przewalski’s horse, called by Mongolians the Takhi horse.

  The Takhi is an odd, stocky equine with short legs, an oversize head, a huge jaw, and a stubby zebra-like mane. He has the poorest excuse for a horse’s tail that I’ve ever seen. In France, many of the guides said that the Takhi looks like some of the horses painted on Pleistocene cave walls, but there’s no evidence that these horses lived in Europe at that time. The Takhi was “discovered” in Asia by Europeans at the end of the nineteenth century (the Mongolians have always known about them), and there was a subsequent rush to collect them for European zoos. Hundreds were caught for shipment to Europe, but most died during the perilous trek west. Of those who survived, many could not adapt to confinement in tiny zoo paddocks. And of those who could adapt, many disappeared at the end of World War II. By the 1960s, few Takhi remained alive, and only nine zoo animals were able to reproduce. This extremely limited gene pool resulted in precariously low reproductive rates.

  Even worse, in Mongolia all the free-roaming Takhi had become extinct. The cause of this extinction, like that of the extinction of horses from the Western Hemisphere, remains elusive, but it may be somehow connected to the increased number of people living in Mongolia, or to changes in the Mongolians’ traditional lifestyle wrought by Soviet mandates and bureaucracy. Mongolians have traditionally lived highly nomadic lives, which allowed them to respond to climate anomalies simply by moving camp. The Soviets, however, insisted that the Mongolian people settle down and live permanently in collectives, which inevitably stressed the delicate steppe lands.

  Aridity increased, as did the number of domestic animals—goats, sheep, cattle, domestic horses—competing for grazing opportunities. It may be that these domestic herds pushed the Takhi over the edge. Or, since domestic horses and Takhi can interbreed, it may be that the Takhi simply interbred with other horses and disappeared as a separate species. It’s also possible that European zoo collectors had ravaged the wild population to such an extent that free-roaming bands became genetically compromised and could no longer produce adequate numbers to sustain the population. In any case, whatever the reason, the last wild Takhi was seen in the late 1960s.


  * * *

  In the decades after World War II, Jan read a great deal about the plight of these horses, and had become concerned. In his imagination, the Takhi was a noble animal, a valiant ancestor to the pony who had kept him company as a child, and in 1972, he and Inge decided to travel through Europe visiting the remaining zoo animals. They planned their trip with great excitement, but when they actually laid eyes on the horses, Jan was distraught.

  These were not the wild horses of his dreams. Instead, they were forlorn and obviously depressed captives being held behind bars in tiny paddocks where they could barely move. Their situation resonated with the couple. The horses stood around with hanging heads, like retired plow horses.

  “Numb,” Jan and Inge said to each other.

  The ground on which the listless horses stood was nothing but dirt. They had no grass to eat. They didn’t bother to look at each other, let alone interact, except to kick or bite. Even this they did halfheartedly, as if establishing their own personal space wasn’t worth the effort. The horses seemed to be half alive. They reminded Jan of life in Nazi-dominated Amsterdam. They reminded Inge of what it felt like to live life behind barbed-wire fences.

  But at least the horses were breathing.

  The couple had learned one important lesson from their wartime miseries: Where there’s life, there’s hope.

  Jan decided to liberate them.

  Jan and Inge decided to search for a way to bring the horses back to the steppes, where the animals could once again roam at will, and thus bring them back from the brink of extinction.

  * * *

  The process of taking animals out of captive situations and returning them to the wild—often called “rewilding”—is never simple, but the task of rewilding the Takhis was even more complex. Horses are fairly large animals who roam in extensive home territories and who, as Jason Ransom and Laura Lagos had explained, must live in tightly knit social bands in order to thrive. Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of open space available in Europe, save in forested areas. Lands that would have been suitable for roaming bands of horses had long been used as farmland.

  Adding to the complexity was the political situation in Europe and Asia. Following World War II, international communication and cooperation were limited, as each nation struggled on its own to find ways for its people to survive and for its economy to revitalize. Additionally, many nations—including nations with land suitable for free-roaming horses—had been absorbed into the Soviet Union. If the Boumans were to search for the best grazing areas for wild horses, they would have to travel behind what Winston Churchill once called the Iron Curtain, which would add layers of diplomatic challenge to their already difficult task.

  Nevertheless, from 1972 until Jan’s death in 1996, the couple worked tirelessly to achieve their goal. They left their jobs, moved to cheaper quarters so they could spend their money on saving the horses, ignored people who told them that what they wanted to do couldn’t be done, and traveled throughout Europe, North America, and Asia at their own expense, explaining the plight of the horses to whomever would listen. They compiled painstaking breeding records on handwritten cards of the horses kept in the zoos, so they could avoid—wherever possible—unfortunate genetic mismatches that would result in unviable pregnancies.

  They began their mission independently, without financial support from zoos or governments or wealthy organizations. They raised funds for their project in bits and pieces by selling place mats and T-shirts at fairs and bake sales. At one conference, Jan spoke out with so much conviction that he ended up hospitalized with a heart attack. Their efforts were not always welcomed by European zoo officials, who felt the couple lacked credentials and status. In the then-more-freewheeling United States, the couple was well received, but help was nevertheless not forthcoming, because Americans believed that, for the most part, the rewilding of this species was a European endeavor. At times, Inge told me, they felt completely hopeless.

  But they persevered. With the help of many other volunteers, Jan and Inge formed the Netherlands-based Foundation for the Preservation and Protection of the Przewalski’s Horse. Eventually their emotional commitment spread nationwide. The cause of the Przewalski’s horse became a Dutch obsession. News articles were written about the horses and about the Boumans’ determination. Government officials began speaking out in support of their efforts. The word “Przewalski’s” was even used in a Dutch national spelling bee.

  An international captive breeding program, a joint effort that coordinated zoos from all over Europe and the United States, had managed to increase the total world population of Takhi horses to well over five hundred animals. This was an improvement, but the number was still by no means adequate.

  As the population of Takhi increased, Jan and Inge and others began to think about how to get the horses out of the zoos and onto grazing areas, which Jan and Inge called “semi-reserves.” In these pastures the horses would have at least some freedom.

  However, Jan and Inge hoped for an even better life for their charges. They envisioned a location for the Takhi that would allow them to roam over large ranges, to choose where to graze, where to find clear-running streams, and where to live as they had evolved to live. For that they needed a lot of open space. The best place, they thought, would be the Asian steppes. The grasslands of Ukraine, for example, would have been perfect. Unfortunately, those grasslands and other, similar regions were controlled until the 1990s almost entirely by the Soviet Union. Sending the horses there didn’t at first seem possible.

  Then, in 1998, in the midst of Mikhail Gorbachev’s openness policy, Soviet officials contacted the couple and suggested several possible locations in Siberia, Ukraine, East Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. They invited the Boumans to visit these sites and to help decide which would be most suitable as a permanent home for the horses.

  Unfortunately, after touring the areas, the couple turned down each of the suggested sites. Some were too small. Some had limited grazing opportunities. Some would have required the eviction of people living on the land, which the Boumans were unwilling to do. Some were already used for grazing domestic horses and other animals. The last thing the Boumans wanted was to try to rewild the Takhi in a place where the local people did not welcome the horses.

  Frustrated and in despair, Jan and Inge wondered if the world no longer had room for the wild horses. But then, just as they had reached their nadir, political conditions changed. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Mongolia became an independent nation. Mongolians were finally able to once again celebrate their own millennia-old local culture, and Jan and Inge found a nation that was yearning for the return of their fabled wild horse.

  The Dutch couple had found a perfect trifecta: open space with good grazing, a welcoming culture, and suitable political conditions that allowed the world’s scientists and other interested parties the freedom to easily come and go in order to work. Indeed, Jan and Inge found that in Mongolia, the Przewalski’s horse was not only welcomed, but revered. Mongolians still sang old songs that memorialized the Takhi’s strength, resilience, and determination. Poets praised the wild horses. Traditional tales dating back hundreds of years extolled their bravery. The people of Mongolia had never seen living Takhi horses, but they remembered them.

  This cultural memory was central to the success of the rewilding project. One of the hardest tasks in rewilding any animal is to get the full support of local people. Without that support, a rewilding project is doomed to failure. One by one, the animals will disappear, ending up on someone’s dinner plate, caught and sold to black-market buyers, or just killed and buried where they’ll never be found. This is particularly true if the region is poor and the people need money and food. It’s difficult to tell a father with hungry children that he should not hunt wildlife or that he should allow wild animals to eat the grass that his own domestic stock needs. Without human support, the rewilded animals cannot survive.

  But here in Mo
ngolia that problem was not as acute. Because the Takhi were so loved, many people were not only willing to tolerate the animals, but enthusiastic about their return. Unfortunately, even in Mongolia, finding room for the horses proved difficult. The land is not fenced and looks to Western eyes as though it’s wide open, but in fact the country has millennia-old customs of how the land is to be used and by which families. Mongolian nomads don’t just “wander” with their livestock any more than Pleistocene people just “wandered” over the European landscape. Many Mongolian families travel to various grazing locations on a season-by-season basis and often have traditional rights to use these places. While the land isn’t “owned” in our Western sense of the word, these traditional rights are still important. If the horses were to be placed somewhere, the people using the land had to agree to alter their patterns of use of the area where the horses would live.

  This posed a difficult problem. Then, someone suggested that they visit a region located about an hour’s drive west of the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar. Ecologically, the area seemed perfect. A river full of water year-round ran through plentiful grasslands. Near the river were mountains, ravines, and trees, where the horses could shelter from the summertime heat or the wintertime wind and snow.

  But best of all, at the center of the site rose Hustai Mountain, a sacred Buddhist refuge where people had come for hundreds of years to pray and to celebrate. Protecting the sanctity of this mountain was a goal that many Mongolians would support, so setting aside a large parcel of land with the sacred mountain as the centerpiece would be a popular idea.

  On the other hand, there were many herders who grazed their livestock in the valley regions surrounding the mountain. The site also had a short valley passageway that had been used by nomads as a throughway for as long as anyone could remember. Cutting off access to that valley by creating a park would be a serious breach of tradition. Jan and Inge, with the help of Mongolian scientists and supportive officials, negotiated agreements that allowed for traditional uses and also protected the horses. Ultimately, all parties agreed that returning the Takhi to Hustai would be a win-win situation for everyone. Since the project would be extremely expensive, the Dutch government even agreed to help with funding.