Visit the wild horses of Aus in Namibia

Photo: Beate Schippert

By Roxanne Reid
In South Africa there are wild horses at Kleinmond in the Cape and Kaapschehoop in Mpumalanga. But it’s those in the Namib Desert that are the wildest and most romantic of all Southern Africa’s feral horses. The first time we went to visit the wild horses of Aus in southern Namibia, we had a number of questions. Where did the horses come from? How do they survive in this harsh environment? 

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We were staying at Eagle’s Nest at Klein Aus Vista. Johann Swiegers took us in his old Toyota Landcruiser down to the waterhole at Garub, where about 150-160 horses were gathered, drinking, grazing and simply lying in the morning sun.

Back then, in 2008, there had been excellent rains, so there was lots of grass for them to eat and they were fairly relaxed. When we returned in 2015, things were very different. What we saw was a blasted wasteland, not a blade of grass within sight of the waterhole. And that made us remember some of what Johann had told us about the difficulties for the horses in years of drought.

Photo: Judy & Scott Hurd for The Gondwana Collection

Then, by late 2017, numbers had plummeted to the lowest level ever recorded; just 84 horses are left, struggling to survive. Unlike the drought of 1998, the current drought has brought a new enemy – a pack of spotted hyenas that has moved into the Garub area and is preying on the horses. Not a single foal has survived since 2012, and more horses were lost to hyenas in 2017 than to the drought.

[Update November 2018] After years of having to be sustained during the drought by feed, the rains in mid-2018 broke the drought and covered the desert with a carpet of grass. By September 2018 the 79 surviving horses were fat and healthy. Even better, a foal had been born and more more expected. Given that not one had survived for six years, this was an event worth celebrating. Given that some hyenas moved out of the Namib Naukluft Park, there was hope that the new foal might have a fighting chance. But by November 2018, the hyenas returned with a vengeance, killing three of the four foals born since September, once again threatening the century-old population. 

Where did the wild horses come from?
There were stories of wild horses already roaming the area in the mid 1920s. So where did they come from?

• One theory suggests they’re descendants of the horses of South African troops. Imagine it’s 1915 and the South African invasion into German-held territory is in full swing. The Germans have 1300 men at Aus, compared to the South Africans’ 10 000 troops and 6000 horses stationed at Garub nearby. But the Germans have a trick up their sleeves; they have three planes in the country and they decide to swoop in with a bomb. Not surprisingly, the horses bolt and scatter. Still vastly outnumbered, the Germans retreat. The South Africans, wanting to stay hot on their heels, perhaps don’t bother to catch the horses. And there you have the makings of a wild herd.

• Another theory relates to a stud that supplied the mines after the 1908 discovery of diamonds at Kolmanskop about 115km west of Aus. On his farm at Aus, Emil Kreplin bred work horses for pulling wagons at the mine and as racehorses for entertainment. The theory suggests that farmers chased these horses away because they competed with karakul sheep for water in an arid area and they became wild.
• Hans-Heinrich von Wolf, who built an incongruous castle in the desert at Duwisib, also used to breed horses for the German Schutztruppe (colonial forces). A third theory is that after he was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, his wife opened the farm gates to set nearly 300 horses free into the desert.

 
The truth is probably a little bit of each of these – that the core herd were horses that belonged to the South African army, German colonial forces and the Kreplin stud (which also had connections to Duwisib). Left behind in the turmoil of World War I, these feral horses lived mainly in the restricted diamond area for the first 70 or 80 years, and that’s how they stayed out of the clutches of hunters and horse capturers. 

Note the blond mane and white diamond on the forehead, characteristic of Duwisib's horses

The wild horses are all dark, either black or brown, though some have blond manes. Some have a white diamond on the forehead or spots on the feet just above the hoofs, which are said to have been characteristics of Duwisib’s horses.

Old photos show Kreplin’s horses had white markings on their backs, which can still be seen on the wild horses today, so a genetic link seems entirely possible.

The white markings on the back were typical of the Kreplin stud of the early 20th century

How does rainfall changes their lives?
Aus is on the southern edge of the Namib Desert, an area that usually has about 90mm of rain in a year. When we visited in 2008, there had been a whopping 200mm so the Bushman grass was as high as an elephant’s eye. Johann pointed to what he said were usually dunes, now well covered in a jacket of grass. ‘After really good rains it takes about 12 months for a good crop of foals,’ he said. ‘That’s three to four weeks for the grass to become good grazing and 11 months for gestation.’ ​

2008, with lots of yellow grass for grazing in the middle distance

2015, with some scrub but no grass to be seen

Under normal conditions the survival rate of foals is 70%. For adults under 20 years it’s above 95%. But in times of drought the survival of foals drops to just 25% and the rate for old horses also decreases. Some 60% of the population is male, which shows the greater strain on the females when they carry and raise foals.

This area is on the edge of three biomes so it enjoys both winter and summer rain. ‘But there was no rain at all in the late 1990s,’ Johann said. In 1992 there were 270 horses but the drought was so bad that 104 were captured and sold to be domesticated. In 1997 they rounded up more for auction but there was a public outcry so they let them go.

‘They’re very social animals,’ he explained, ‘and they’d been rounded up randomly rather than as families. This took a toll on the social organisation of the herds. By 1999 the drought was so bad there were just 89 left.’ By 2008 the population had bounced back to 165.

The trough in this 2008 photo has since been replaced with a bigger round waterhole

​Safe in Johann’s hands, we walked among the horses for a while before going to the hide overlooking the waterhole for some shade. The horses had been chomping on it, nibbling the planks of wood. ‘They’re bored because the grazing is so easy,’ Johann chuckled. ‘At the moment they only need to graze for eight hours a day. But when they have to travel far from the water for grazing they might be on the go for 20 hours, so they’ll drink for just three minutes and be gone again.’

Photo: Judy & Scott Hurd for The Gondwana Collection

This means that the chances of seeing them in dry times are slim, so it was doubly rewarding that we saw more than a dozen of them in May 2015, when the landscape was so parched it looked like fallout from a nuclear bomb.

‘Back in the 1990s they were called the ghost horses because they were so seldom seen in those times of drought,’ said Johann. By contrast, after good rains in June 2008, we saw them just chilling around the waterhole because there was plenty of grazing close by. In such easy conditions, they adopt a ‘leisure mode’, using the spare time – saved by not having to walk long distances for food – to play and do a whole lot of resting.

Unless you're with an experienced guide, stay in the hide to watch the horses

How do they survive in the desert?
One of the first adaptations these animals had to make to survive here in the wild was to tolerate levels of dehydration that would crush a domestic horse. Both temperature and how much grass there is to eat influence how often the horses come to drink at the Garub waterhole. When grass is abundant close to the waterhole, they’ll drink every day. When grazing is far away and temperatures are low, most will only drink every third day.

Another adaptation has been learning to conserve energy. Unless they have to travel far from the water to find grazing they just won’t budge – as we saw in 2008 when there was lots of tall grass near the waterhole that they could munch on around the clock if they wanted. 

The horses share the waterhole at Garub with wild antelope like gemsbok (oryx)

In this hot environment where temperatures can soar to the mid-40s (degrees Celsius) in summer, the horses conserve energy and keep cool by not standing side-on to the sun. Instead they present the narrowest or smallest part of their body to the sun, like the head or the bum. To make up for the lack of shade trees the horses, especially foals, will lie in the shadow cast by another horse.

The grasses they eat lack salt so they nibble on calcrete stones to get salt. In addition, in dry years 7% of their diet is dung, a form of double-digesting that gives them twice as much protein and three times as much fat as the dry grass does on its first run through their digestive system. 

​Walking among the horses with Johann, meeting them unchallenged on their own turf, was a chance to watch their interactions from up close, see how protective the mothers were of their foals, experience how generally gentle they were.

Living here in this wide and wild expanse of desert, free to roam and form their own social structures, seems to suit the horses of the Namib. Even when they’re stressed by lack of rainfall (and therefore lack of grazing), as we saw in 2015 and has been the case in 2017, there’s less conflict than you might get from a herd of grumpy gemsbok, and fights between stallions seem more for show than genuine antagonism.

Above all, these horses are a symbol of the wild beauty of Namibia, the freedom of its wide and rugged landscapes.

Drive carefully on the tar road that cuts through the area, to help protect the horses

What can you do to help?
The wild horses are under stress from the current drought (2015-17). To help maintain the wild horse population that is such a tourism draw card in this southern area of Namibia, please consider donating money to the Namibia Wild Horses Foundation, which uses funds for fodder supplementation and maintaining the water supply. Donate here.

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