Zhang Yanbao has a tough name, which often misleads those who have never met him. In fact, this black and strong man has tenderness, and for more than 30 years, he has given this tenderness to the precious wild animal , the Przewalski's wild horse.
Przewalski's wild horses are the only surviving wild horse breed on Earth, which originally inhabited the Junggar Basin in Mongolia and Xinjiang, China. Due to poaching and other reasons, the Przewalski's wild horse once disappeared in its native area. Since 1985, China has successively introduced 24 Przewalski's wild horses from foreign countries and established a wild horse breeding research center in Xinjiang, trying to rebuild wild populations in the original wild horses.
Zhang Yanbao, engineer of Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, conducts rewilding training for Przewalski's wild horses (Photo by Hou Zhaokang, Xinhua News Agency)
Zhang Yanbao, engineer of Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, watches video surveillance (Photo by Hou Zhaokang, Xinhua News Agency)
At the 35-year-old Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, the burly Zhang Yanbao sits on a small sofa with red socks exposed under his pants, and the 48-year-old is just in time for his life.
"I was here when I was a hairy boy." In the 1980s, Zhang Yanbao entered the center, working first as an electrician, driver, and later as a wild horse breeder.
The Junggar Basin, the home of the wild horses, is suitable for the restoration of the Przewalski's wild horse population, but it is not a habitable place for humans, and even trees are difficult to survive on the alkaline land. Zhang Yanbao lived in the "ground nest" for several years, and he could not eat meat for several days.
Scientific researchers are reluctant to work there, and the unit is determined to provide these retained workers with a chance to further their studies. In 1989, Zhang Yanbao went to a university in Yunnan to study animal protection, and he always called himself a "poor student" and obtained a college diploma in 2 years and returned to the center to work.
By the end of 2000, the total number of wild horses in the center had reached 98. In 2001, China decided to select 27 Przewalski's wild horses for wild release experiments, and the wild release site was selected in the Karamaili Mountain Ungulate Wildlife Nature Reserve on the eastern edge of the Junggar Basin, where the wild horses were once home.
Zhang Yanbao also followed the first wild wild horses to start a 7-year field observation. "In that Gobi Desert, the Wild Horse taught me a lot." Zhang Yanbao said.
Usually, when the young stallion reaches the age of 3, it will have a strong interest in the mare, at which point the stallion will drive the young stallion away. But Zhang Yanbao found an anomalous case, a small stallion that lost its mother shortly after birth did not leave the group until the age of 4.
"Because it was protected by two 'sisters', whenever the stallion tried to drive it away, the sisters fought against the stallion, and this little stallion, because it had lived longer in the herd, had been in good health, and later succeeded in forming its own family."
What moved Zhang Yanbao the most was the "friendship" between wild horses. In the winter of 2001, a pair of foals in the herd who often played together lost one. Zhang Yanbao and his colleagues drove around the Great Gobi. Just when people were at a loss, the friend of the lost pony, another foal, suddenly broke away from the herd, and Zhang Yanbao drove and followed the abnormally behaved foal until it walked into a red willow forest.
"There, its little friend was lying dying in the snow, and we found that the little colt was showing us the way, and he wanted us to save his friend." Speaking of this, tears swirled in Zhang Yanbao's eyes.
After a long time with wild horses, Zhang Yanbao established a simple value: "I never felt that horses were inferior to people, people and animals are equal, and we live together in this land." ”
Zhang Yanbao, engineer of Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center, petting Przewalski's wild horses (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Hou Zhaokang)
Zhang Yanbao, engineer of Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center (right), feeds Przewalski's wild horses (Photo by Hou Zhaokang, Xinhua News Agency)
However, these interesting wild horse stories are the essence of 7 years of wilderness survival. Zhang Yanbao said that there was no one in the wild place where they lived, there was no electricity at one time, and the draft had to be transported out, and the work there was mainly hardship and no romance.
To Zhang's distress, his daughter did not like to hear the stories because the wild horses stole her father. "She was sent to a small private kindergarten at a very young age and lacked her father's company." Zhang Yanbao felt sorry for his family and had the idea of leaving several times.
Since the success of the first wild horse release of Przewalski's wild horses, the protection of wild horses has received more and more attention from the government and all sectors of society, and the scientific research and living conditions of the center have also been greatly improved. In 2008, Zhang Yanbao returned to the center from the reserve and was able to return to his home 40 kilometers away once a week. He said that the most bitter days have long passed, and today he has strengthened his original idea - "to use your life to do one thing well and let more wild horses return to nature." (Reporters Zhang Xiaolong, Lu Yifan, Hou Zhaokang)
Source: Xinhua News Agency