Garranos Unique Breed - the only wild portuguese horses

About 1,600 of these wild, small but hardy mountain-living horses still roam free in the Peneda-Geres National Park in northeastern Portugal. Unfortunately their numbers have dwindled because of wolves preying on the young horses. The garrano breed was only officially recognized in 1993. The chestnut brown males stand about four feet high at the most. The garranos are well equipped to survive the mountainous terrain found in the northern hills. The pint-sized horses are believed to be the descendants of prehistoric horses such as the Equus Caballus, which roamed the northern Iberian Peninsula 1 million years ago. But, garranos have only one foal a year with the maximum life expectancy of the breed averaging 30 years. The breed almost disappeared at the start of the 20th century, but in 1945, 21 garranos in captivity were selected and freed into the wild in the Serras Amarela and Geres, with the objective of creating a reserve for them. In 1970, the Peneda-Gerês National Park was created with the aim to protect the last wild group of garranos horses in existence. In 1994 the breed was classified by the European Union as a “breed under threat” and registration began of all remaining horses. Read more about the gerranos breed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrano