The Wild Horse
The wild horse maintains, protects and helps to rebuild environmental systems and allows other native species to thrive—all working to keep nature in balance.
Rewilding America Now is working to understand and demonstrate the role of wild horses as keystone species in North America.
"The horse (Equus caballus) is the only valid horse species that evolved in North America living on the planet today. It is the surviving member of Pleistocene and comes from the lineage of horses that arose 5 million years ago."
- Ross MacPhee Ph.D., Senior Curator at the American Museum of Natural History
Rewilding America Now
funds new DNA discovery
Rewilding America Now funded two groundbreaking environmental eDNA research papers from McMaster University. More field research is underway as Rewilding America Now helps to break down barriers in science and push the boundaries of knowledge.
“It is important to demonstrate that it is crucial to reconnect with our past to solve the complex challenges we face today.”
- Dr Tyler Murchie, Postdoctoral Fellow, McMaster University
2021
e-DNA collected from soil shows that wild horses have roamed in North America since at least 6,000 years ago. Thus, native people and horses coexisted for thousands of years on this continent.
2022
The Bering Strait land bridge allowed horses and other Pleistocene megafauna to migrate to and from continents. Horses that originated in North America were thus able to populate Eurasia.
Learn more about the true story of the horse.
