Seven Asiatic wild asses — known as onagers — were relocated from Jordan into a Saudi Arabian nature reserve in April 2024 C.E., marking the first free-roaming individuals of their kind seen in the country in roughly 100 years. Since their arrival, one female has already given birth to a foal, a small but meaningful sign that the reintroduction is taking hold.
At a glance
- Onager reintroduction: Seven Persian onagers were transferred from Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature to the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve in northern Saudi Arabia, with plans to add a stallion and two more mares to support genetic diversity.
- Persian onager: Fewer than 600 individuals remain in the wild, placing this subspecies in the endangered category on the IUCN Red List — making every new population site genuinely significant for the species’ survival.
- Saudi wildlife recovery: The reserve’s rewilding program focuses on historically occurring species, and the Persian onager was selected as the closest living relative to the Syrian wild ass, which was hunted to extinction in the 1920s C.E.
Why a century-old absence matters
Saudi Arabia was once home to the Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus), a subspecies of onager that roamed the Arabian Peninsula until hunting wiped it out in the early 20th century. That subspecies is gone forever.
Rather than treat that loss as a closed chapter, conservationists at the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve (PMBSRR) turned to the IUCN’s guidance on ecological substitution. The governing principle: when a subspecies is irretrievably lost, reestablishing its ecological function using the most suitable close relative is a legitimate and valuable conservation strategy. The Persian onager (E. h. onager), already conserved in Jordan since 1982 C.E., fit that role.
Onagers are older as a lineage than horses or zebras. Restoring them to land they once shaped is not nostalgia — it’s ecosystem repair.
From Jordan to the Arabian desert
The choice of Jordan as a source population wasn’t arbitrary. Researchers found a 50 to 60 percent similarity in vegetation between Jordan’s reserve and the PMBSRR, giving the transferred animals a reasonable match to the plant life they already know. That overlap reduces the stress of relocation and improves the odds of survival.
The seven onagers are currently held in a fenced zone of roughly 200 square kilometers. Once the population stabilizes, the plan is to release them selectively into a much larger 20,000-square-kilometer area — nearly 7,800 square miles — where more natural behavior, including free movement and foraging, will be possible.
Batool Ajlouni, president of the board of directors at Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, described the joint project as an effort to build “real collaboration in conserving ecosystems, habitats, and ecological connectivity through best practices in protected area management.” Jordan has been working with this species for more than four decades, and that institutional knowledge is now being shared across borders.
What comes next
The reserve plans to expand the herd by adding one stallion and two mares to the existing seven animals. This matters for a specific reason: with an endangered species numbering fewer than 600 in the wild, genetic diversity within any captive or semi-wild population is as important as raw numbers. A genetically narrow group, however large, carries compounded extinction risk.
The IUCN Red List entry for the Persian onager reflects decades of population decline driven by habitat loss, competition with livestock, and hunting. Saudi Arabia’s reserve, with its protected land and active management, offers a buffer against those pressures.
Looking further ahead, the PMBSRR has signaled that the onager program will eventually include ecotourism and educational components. Linking conservation outcomes to local engagement and economic opportunity has proven to strengthen long-term protection in community-based conservation efforts worldwide.
An honest look at the challenges ahead
Reintroduction programs rarely follow a straight line. The population is still tiny, the animals are in a managed enclosure, and scaling to a truly wild existence across thousands of square kilometers will take years of monitoring and adjustment. The broader Persian onager population also remains endangered across its native range in Iran, meaning pressure on the species hasn’t eased — it has simply gained one new foothold.
Still, a foal born in Saudi Arabia, a country that hadn’t seen an onager in a century, is the kind of evidence that conservation efforts accumulate slowly and then, sometimes, visibly. The broader pattern of wildlife comeback stories from Europe and Central Asia suggests that once protected habitat is secured and hunting pressure removed, equid populations can recover meaningfully over decades.
One hundred years is a long absence. Seven animals and one foal is a small beginning. Both things are true — and both matter.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Saudi Arabia
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