According to the Friday-published China Daily, the one-year-old mare, sent back on August 28 last year to its natural habitat with 26 wild horses raised in captivity, died from cold and starvation at the Kala Maili Natural Reserve in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Cao Jie, head of the Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding and Research Center, said that a cold front pounding the northern part of Xinjiang has sent local temperatures plummeting to minus 40 degrees Celsius.

A latest report from the monitoring stations at Kala Maili said that there were four more wild horses in a weak condition which were now receiving special help with food and water.

Zhu Fude, director of the Wildlife and Plant Conservation Office with the local forestry bureau, told the China Daily that fodder had been scattered for the horses in areas with especially harsh conditions.

If that fails, Zhu said that all the horses will be brought back to stables until the severe winter ends and they get strong enough to return to the wild.

According to the paper, huge herds of Xinjiang wild horses lived in the area 60 million years ago, but the population declined remarkably and finally vanished, owing to rampant poaching by adventurers in the Mid-19th century.

Currently, wild horses are an endangered species with fewer than 1,000 alive in the world.

Another group of artificially bred wild horses would be released into the wild next spring, if most of the first group showed they could survive and live by themselves, the Paper said.

(China Daily January 4, 2002)