International Wild Equid Conference

18-22 September 2012
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria

Joel Berger

John J. Craighead Chair & Professor of Wildlife Conservation

University of Montana, Division of Biological Sciences and Department of Forestry and Conservation

http://bergerlab.dbs.umt.edu/ [Link 1]

Is There a Future for Large Scale Migrations?

Migratory animals provide a challenging problem for conservation, as the scale of their seasonal movements transcends any capacity of a protected area network to manage and protect them. Despite growing concern about this urgent and important challenge, there have been few large scale attempts to develop meaningful conservation actions to halt the steady pace of declines, especially for many of the poster children of terrestrial migration – Asian and African ungulates. The causes are as obvious as profound – burgeoning human populations, impoverishment, habitat loss, a lack of conservation incentives. For equids, the challenges parallel those of other large-bodied migrants. Based on lessons learned from both successes and failures, conservation opportunities persist. These involve recognizing the overarching role of human impacts relative to our lack of biological knowledge of a species needs. These vary by continent, by species, and by local region. If we recognize these and adjust our behaviour with voluntary or regulatory actions, rather than just recognition, conservation of migration in equids may be possible.

Daniel I. Rubenstein

Chair Class of 1877  Professor of Zoology

Princeton University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

http://www.princeton.edu/~dir/ [Link 2]

Equids and Ecological Niches:  Behavioral and Life History Variations on a Common Theme

Although equids are evolutionarily closely related and have a common body plan and broadly similar life styles, as a group they exhibit a wide array of ecological, life history and social variations. These differences emerge because different species--and even different populations within species--occupy different niches.  Each niche poses a unique set of challenges with respect to foraging and drinking as well as managing risk associated with predation and competition, especially with people and their herds.  The aim of this talk is to illustrate how variations in niche characteristics produce variations on a common equid theme.

Sandra Olsen

Head of Anthropology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Pittsburgh, PA, USA

http://www.carnegiemnh.org/anthro/olsen.html [Link 3]

The Roles of Humans in Equine Distribution through Time

The human-horse relationship has been a key factor in the shrinking and expansion of the horse’s range, its introduction to new regions and redistribution in areas previously occupied in the Pleistocene.  This presentation will provide a brief synopsis of the ways in which the changing roles of the horse in human societies and the movements of people have combined to produce the current geographic coverage of this amazingly adaptable species.

For millennia, there were few landmark events in the human-horse relationship, and the connection between hominins and equids was constrained to predator vs. prey as Paleolithic hunters dispatched wild equids with spears for consumption.  This early relationship was confined to the Pleistocene ranges of the horse, primarily in Eurasia, but also briefly in the New World after humans entered at the close of the Ice Age.

After the end of the Pleistocene, the natural range of the European Wild Horse, aka Tarpan, shrunk considerably due to changes in vegetational zones and climate.  It is relatively certain that a more or less continuous belt across Northern Europe and the Eurasian steppe was still populated by Tarpans in the early to middle Holocene.  However, the few tiny islets of relict populations sprinkled about at the margins introduce difficulties in reconstructing the entire Holocene range of the Tarpan. 

Domestication can be viewed as the initial catalyst that eventually enabled humans to greatly expand the geographic distribution of horses well beyond their Pleistocene range and to reintroduce them into areas where they had vanished 10,000 years prior.  Horses were comparatively late to be brought fully under human control.  Verification for horse domestication dates only to about 5500 years ago, when the Copper Age Botai people were keeping, breeding, and even milking horses in northern Kazakhstan.  Expansion of domestic horses began at a glacial rate, but there is evidence for re-introduction into parts of Western Europe by 3,000 BCE (5,000 BP).

It was another millennium plus before domestic herds were dispersed into the Near East and paired with the wheel. The horse by this time served a number of important functions, but its role in warfare molded geopolitics through human history from the 2^nd millennium BCE until recent times.  Military campaigns have served as a major contributor to the spread of horses. 

The repopulation of North America with horses brought in by European explorers and colonists was made possible by seafaring.  The transport of horses on ships overcame natural barriers, but also led to the creation of many feral populations on islands.  This talk will focus on how humans played a major role in expanding the distribution of the horse and indirectly creating feral populations around the world.