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Visit the wild horses of Aus in Namibia

17/1/2018

19 Comments

 
The wild horses of Aus in NamibiaPhoto: 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? 

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.
the wild horses of Aus in Namibia
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.
The wild horses of Aus in Namibia
  • 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. 
The wild horses of Aus in Namibia
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 wild horses of Aus in Namibia
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.’ ​
The wild horses of Aus in Namibia
2008, with lots of yellow grass for grazing in the middle distance
The wild horses of Aus in Namibia
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 wild horses of Aus in Namibia
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.’
Wild horse and foal, Aus, Namibia
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.
Garub waterhole and hide, Aus, Namibia
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. 
Wild horses drinking at Garub waterhole, Aus, Namibia
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. 
The wild horses of Aus in Namibia
​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.
Signpost to the wild horses at Garub near Aus, Namibia
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 (2015-18). 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.

​Find it interesting? Pin this image!
Why to visit the wild horses at Garub near Aus in Namibia #horses #travel #Africa
Why to visit the wild horses at Garub near Aus in Namibia #horses #travel #Africa
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Copyright © Roxanne Reid - No words or photographs on this site may be used without permission from roxannereid.co.za
19 Comments
Lori Robinson link
18/1/2018 10:02:47 pm

That is an amazing story Roxanne. I had no idea about these wild horses being there. I plan to lead a tour to Namibia next year and will go see them myself. I hope by then the droughts have lifted. SO sad about their population plummeting due to drought and hyenas. Thanks for the info. Lori from SavingWild.com

Reply
Roxanne
19/1/2018 10:04:13 am

They are pretty amazing, Lori. They've survived droughts before but the arrival of the hyenas in the area is definitely a game changer. You're going to love your trip to Namibia - one of my favourite places on the planet.

Reply
Christine Wulff-Swiegers link
19/1/2018 12:12:41 pm

After a couple of serious letters to MET and urgent status reports and now in early January bad local press, MET is busy with discussing long-term solutions. The Namibia Wild Horses Foundation are awaiting feedback from MET regarding the predation problem by spotted hyenas that has reached unprecedented levels is now actually the bigger problem in the moment than the drought. We can carry on feeding the horses, but the predation now puts the whole population at risk. No foals have survived since 2012 and also adult horses are preyed on. We lost more horses to predation in 2017 than to the drought itself. The moving in and staying of the hyenas in the area can be, most likely, drought related … An interesting research project, but we are running out of time. It is now or never for MET to decide to either relocate the hyenas or let us relocate the horses to private land nearby. The drought has brought many environmental and habitat changes, that we are only starting to grasp now. This current drought is one of the heaviest that we know about.
Until further notice, the NWHF carries on as usual with feeding the horses… And we are preparing for feeding for another couple of months…
Please hold thumbs though , that MET comes soon with a long-term solution.

Reply
Roxanne
19/1/2018 12:32:33 pm

Thanks for this invaluable insight into the background to what's happening at Aus, Christine. We can only hope that a decision will be made soon to protect the horses from the hyenas; it would be so sad for them to be wiped out completely after a century of surviving in the desert.

Reply
Claudia Opperman
22/11/2018 03:29:40 pm

Good Day

We have read that the plight of the Wild Horses in recent newspapers and our MD, Wessie van der Westhuizen, would very much like to meet with you so we may explore how best we as Namibia Breweries Limited could assist.

Kindly advise if a meeting on Thursday, 29 November 2018 morning at 09h30 at our offices is possible and if we may welcome you then to discuss.

With kind regards
Claudia
Claudia Opperman | Senior Brand Manager | Namibia Breweries Limited | Tel : +264 (0)61 320 4139 | Fax : +264 (0)61 320 4061| Iscor Street, Northern Industrial, Windhoek | P.O. Box 206, Windhoek, Namibia| email: claudia.opperman@ol.na

Reply
Roxanne Reid
26/11/2018 10:41:23 am

That sounds wonderful, but I'm just a blogger who wrote about the horses. There should be a link to the Foundation in the blog post above, or you can Google them to get direct access. I'm currently in Lesotho with limited connectivity so can't act as a middle man. All the best.

Jan van Blerk
19/1/2018 08:24:42 pm

It would be save to state and say- in droughts like this 4-5 years surviving is difficult for the wild Horses on its own and help had been forthcoming from various places. MET reaction to solutions proposed are slow or just in an ignorant way. No foals survived for 4-5 years and why?? Cause To many Spotted Hyenas. They were drawn to garub due to drought and YES relocation close by and Yes cause Koichab Water is more out of order than in order thus Spotted Hyenas had to come to Garub Waters to drink and found nice horses around - easy prey. Garub is not natural habitat for Spotted Hyenas and they need to move and or removed to where they belong. if not we can greed the Namibian Wild Horses forever as they CANNOT co exist with Spotted Hyenas at all as it’s not possible. Thus it one of the 2 that will remain. Relocating Wild Horses is risky as history proves. Hyenas must go and quick by whichever way that will ensure 100 % removal / relocation.

Reply
Roxanne
19/1/2018 08:34:40 pm

Thanks for your comments, Jan. Let's hope a solution to the hyena problem is found soon - preferably relocation. I know they're part of the natural order but it would indeed be sad to lose all the wild horses from the Aus area.

Reply
Sarah
20/1/2018 11:54:12 am

Amazing post! I never knew about these horses. So interesting.

Reply
Roxanne
20/1/2018 12:13:12 pm

Thanks, Sarah - definitely something to see for yourself on a trip to Namibia, which is a fabulous destination in so many ways. I just love it.

Reply
Sabine link
20/1/2018 11:59:49 am

Love this post. I visited the wild horses the first time last September, they were amazing to see. We did only see 2 horses, so very jealous you saw so many and even a foal.

Reply
Roxanne
20/1/2018 12:14:27 pm

Lots of foals in 2008, Sabine, but not in 2015, when the horses were already taking strain from the drought that still continues.

Reply
Brent
20/1/2018 09:41:28 pm

Any amazing article. So filled with information. Well done.

Reply
Roxanne
21/1/2018 07:45:33 am

Thanks, Brent, glad you liked it. Thanks for the pat on the back!

Reply
David Barritt link
14/3/2019 11:20:04 am

We are an international charity and would like to contact the foundation to see if we can help, but can't find any contact information. Can you assist?

Reply
Roxanne
14/3/2019 01:04:25 pm

Thanks David, if you look at the last two words in the blog post (in blue) they're a live link to the foundation. http://www.wild-horses-namibia.com/donate/

Reply
Alima
9/1/2022 05:00:00 am

Hello! Are people generally allowed to go in close amongst the horses? I’m planning a photographic journey to Namibia in a month and would love to share these animals with the world.

Reply
Roxanne Reid
9/1/2022 07:32:26 am

The only time we've been close to them was with a guide from Desert Horse Inn at Aus. When we've been on our own we've stayed in the hide above the waterhole, which is safest for you and the horses.

Reply
Jan Van Blerk
9/1/2022 12:59:34 pm

possible by special arrangement yes

Reply

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    I'm an independent travel writer and book editor with a passion for Africa - anything from African travel, people, safari and wildlife to adventure, heritage, road-tripping and slow travel.
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