Recently, the Przewalski's Horse Homecoming Program was launched at Hangzhou Safari Park in east China, with eight of the rare equines set to travel thousands of kilometers back to their ancestral homeland. As a Class I national protected wild animal in China and the only surviving wild horse species on Earth, Przewalski's horses originally inhabited the Gobi deserts of the Junggar Basin in Xinjiang, western China.

Hangzhou Safari Park introduced four batches of Przewalski's horses in 2001 and now hosts a population of 29. The eight selected individuals — four males and four females — were chosen based on health status, breeding records and wild adaptability. They will first receive over two weeks of systematic rewilding training before being transferred to Xinjiang for gradual acclimatization.

Upon arrival, the horses will undergo quarantine in dedicated enclosures at Tianshan Mountain Wildlife Park, followed by DNA kinship testing and six months of wilderness acclimatization. The 75-square-kilometer park and the 30,000-mu (roughly 2,000-hectare) semi-wild training zone of the Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding and Research Center together form a "pre-wild classroom" for the species.