Recently, Professor Li Kai of Beijing Forestry University led 8 researchers to the Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, kicking off the prelude to the wild horse deworming work.
Braving the cold of more than minus 20 degrees, researchers mixed the insect repellent into carrot and corn flour feed to feed the wild horses, took a stool sample, and picked out the parasites such as horse ascarids, nematodes, and horse stomach flies for research and analysis.
Professor Li Kai said: "Parasites are common in animal groups, and for exotic species, especially animals introduced from abroad, they will become susceptible animals after entering endemic areas. Under certain conditions, parasites can also be a direct factor in population collapse, posing a serious threat to the reintroduction of very small populations to create animals. Przewalski's wild horses are reintroduced to their places of origin after more than 100 years of human rearing and breeding, and their important manifestation of environmental adaptation is the survival strategy and behavior of being able to resolve the crisis similar to that of native species under the stress of climate, natural enemies, parasites and other ecological factors. However, under the drought conditions in winter, more Przewalski's wild horses gather at artificial rescue points, rather than migrating like Mongolian wild donkeys; more than 3 to 5 times that of mongolian wild donkeys and scattered domestic horses in the same region, parasitic infections occur in Przewalski's wild horse colonies all year round, which exposes many hidden dangers in the process of wild horse rewilding. ”
"In addition to using drugs to deworm, we also control the parasitic diseases of wild horses by applying equipment such as elevated feeding tanks and constant temperature sinks to cut off the transmission chain of nematodes and increase semi-scattered training. Entemark, senior veterinarian at the Mustang Breeding Research Center, said.
The team of Professor Li Kai of Beijing Forestry University has cooperated with the Wild Horse Center for nearly 20 years to systematically carry out research on Przewalski's parasitic nematode disease, pathogen identification and monitoring of gastric fly maggot disease, equine gastric fly fauna and black-bellied gastric fly population genetic structure, and epidemiology of wild equine fly maggot disease. Long-term infection rate, infection intensity, and deworming efficacy of nematode parasites are monitored, and their transmission routes are explored. Aiming at the problem of the frequent occurrence of the important parasite of Przewalski's wild horse in the wild state, the multi-level in-depth study of biology and epidemiology was carried out from the aspects of the life history of the horse stomach fly, the infection route of the horse gastric fly, and the spatio-temporal distribution of the epidemic. At present, he has been leading the annual wild horse population health care work for 15 years, revealing the composition and characteristics of the desert grassland horse gastric fly fauna, mastering the relationship between climatic factors and the incidence of the equine gastric fly epidemic, clarifying the relationship between the "wild horse-wild donkey-domestic horse" between the horse stomach fly transmission chain, preliminarily defining the dominant stallion horse gastric fly infection area and infection period, and proposing an ecological regulation scheme for the suppressed horse gastric fly population for the occurrence node of the horse gastric fly. The above research results provide a solid foundation and important support for the scientific rewilding of wild horses.
Yang Jianming, director of the Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, said that the Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, as the conservation biology research base of Beijing Forestry University, will continue to strengthen scientific research cooperation between the two sides and carry out research in many fields such as wild horse habitat, food and water source, behavioral ecology, physiological ecology, genetic diversity, parasitic diseases, etc., so that the scientific research work of wild horses will reach a new level and escort the return of wild horses to wilding.
The Przewalski's wild horse is the flagship species of the open landscape belt of Eurasia and is the only wild horse breed in the world, with only more than 2,000 remaining in the world. Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center has been established 34 years ago, on the basis of the introduction of 24 wild horses, 6 generations of 760 wild horses have been successfully bred, and in August 2001 in the Kalamairi Ungulate Nature Reserve, China's first wild horse release test was implemented, 16 batches of 110 wild horses have been released into the wild, and the current population of wild horses has reached 481, of which 267 wild stocks, 117 semi-scattered stocks, and 97 captive populations have developed into the world's largest wild horse base. The wild horse release experiment has achieved exploratory success and has become the most successful model of species reintroduction in China.
(Zhang Hefan) (China Daily Xinjiang Reporter Station)