The Tarpan


The very last Tarpan passed away in a Ukrainian game preserve at Askania Nova in 1876. A primitive kind of wild horse, which once roamed from Southern France and Spain eastwards to central Russia, the Tarpan become extinct within the wild during the late 1800s. Causes of its extinquishing would be the wreckage of its forest and steppe environment to create room for humans; hunting by farmers saying their crops were being eaten and mares stolen; also assimilation inside a growing domestic horse populace. There have been numerous tries to replicate the Tarpan through re-breeding, producing horses that in fact look like their vanished forebears.