For the first time in at least 200 years, endangered wild horses have returned to the golden steppe of Kazakhstan, the result of decades of efforts.
The transport of seven Prževalski horses from Europe to this Central Asian country took place at the beginning of June in an operation led by the Prague Zoo.
Researchers told the BBC that the horses have been doing well for two weeks now: roaming the plains and even beginning the mating process.
Zoo officials say it's a triumph of generations of conservation work.
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"This is an endangered species returning to its ancestral lands, a species that became extinct in the wild in the 1960s, last seen in Mongolia ... so this is simply miraculous," said Filip Masek, a spokesman for the Prague Zoo.
While horses have been gradually reintroduced to Mongolia and China in recent decades, this is the first time they have returned to Kazakhstan.
The Przhevalsky horse is the last wild species of these animals on the planet, named after the Russian researcher Nikolay Przhevalsky, who was the first to record and provide scientific evidence of the existence of these horses.
The species originated millennia ago from the steppes of central Asia, and explorers took them to Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries, where populations were established in zoos.
Some of them ended up in zoos in Munich and Prague.
It is their descendants who have now been brought back to Kazakhstan.
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Cultural artifacts show that people in the north of the country rode and used horses for food at least 2000 years before domesticated horses were recorded in Europe.
But by the time of Prževalski's "discovery" in 1879, horses could only be found in a small part of western Mongolia.
Competition with humans and livestock, along with changes in the environment led to their extinction.
Recognizing the threat, after the Second World War international efforts were made to save the animals.
The Prague Zoo is entrusted with the "international breeding" of this breed.
Last week, he returned the first contingent to Kazakhstan - a group of one stallion and six mares.
The goal is to bring in at least 40 more heads in the next five years.
"This is an event of historical importance," said the director of the zoo, Miroslav Bobek.
"The seven horses that we transported here by Czech army planes represent the first individuals of this species in central Kazakhstan after hundreds of years."
This horse has long been considered the only remaining wild species of horse, with other species, such as the American mustang and the Australian brumby, being wild horses descended from domesticated animals.
The Prževalski horse is shorter and stockier than modern domesticated animals, and their genetic differences show that neither species is the ancestor of the other.
The Prague Zoo, which for the past 10 or more years has been returning horses to Central Asia, mainly to Mongolia, announced that the return of these animals to Kazakhstan has been planned since 2022.
The past week was the culmination of many years of work.
The Prague Zoo selected horses from different programs across Europe and housed them together in the Berlin Zoo for a few months to get to know each other before being transferred to Kazakhstan.
When the horses were airlifted to Kazakhstan, they were first taken on an eight-hour drive to the plains, where they were finally released on Altain Dal - the Kazakh name for the Golden Steppe.
"A mare named Tessa was the first to run out of the transport box into the corral, then Vespa, followed by Umbra, and finally Sari," Bobek said.
After a short period of adaptation, scientists noticed that some horses began to mate.
The group was moved at the beginning of summer so that they have time to adapt before winter, which is very harsh in the steppe plains.
Scientists hope Kazakhstan will repeat the success of Mongolia, where the return of 34 horses helped boost the local population to more than 850 animals.
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