Im Tennenloher Forst

From the sculpture park to the wild horsesIt may sound strange, but the Tennenloher Forest, just outside Erlangen, is home to wild horses. Not in the wild, but in an outdoor enclosure covering almost 90 hectares. It is part of the Tennenloher Forst nature reserve, which is one of the largest in Bavaria with an area of 930 hectares. Until 1993, the area was used as a military training area, most recently by the US Army. This created open sandy areas that provide ideal living conditions for many animal and plant species. When the Americans left, the tanks that kept the sandy grasslands and heaths open also disappeared. Since 2003, a small herd of young stallions of the rare Przewalski"s horses has ensured that the steppe-like landscape has been preserved. The Przewalski"s horses were long thought to be the last true wild horses, but according to the latest findings, their ancestors were domesticated. Since the early 1970s, they were considered extinct in the wild and only a few individuals survived in zoos. There, the global population has been increased to around 2000 animals through targeted breeding. The Przewalski"s horses are to be reintroduced to their original habitat in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The young stallions from the Tennenloher Forest are also to return there one day. But we still have enough time to pay them a visit. On the way to them, we can admire some modern works of art along the way as well as numerous historical and some newly created field monuments. But the wild horses are clearly the stars of our hike.(Automatically translated by DeepL)