Preserving wild progeny of conquistadors' horses

The project aims to find and breed horses related to those imported to the Americas by the Spanish over 400 years ago.

NORTHERN NEW MEXICO (CNN) -- In New Mexico, Southwest historian Carlos LoPopolo works hard to preserve a piece of history many thought was long gone.

The driving force behind the New Mexico Horse Project, LoPopolo heads a band of volunteers searching for the descendants of horses brought to the region by Spanish conquistadors 400 years ago -- the first horses on the American continents since the ancient ancestors of the horse died out 11,000 years ago.

Native to the American continents, the ancient horses once roamed the Americas in herds that rivaled those of the legendary bison.

Scientists aren't sure exactly why horses, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other large mammals disappeared from the area, although there is evidence of both climatic change and the arrival of humans and hunting.

Whatever the reason, they were gone, vanished from the Plains, leaving behind only distant relatives who had left the Americas for other continents before the American extinction.

EXTRA INFORMATION PHOTO GALLERY: New Mexican Horse Project

Some of those ancestors made their way into Europe, eventually becoming the modern horse, and in Spain, the Spanish Barb War Horse.

In the 1500s, Don Juan des Onate came to the Southwest with 900 horses and established the first European settlement in the region.

But those horses, too, were once believed to be extinct in America -- vanished into the boiling genetic pool of later generations that were put to work in the early days of the United States.

"In the beginning, I believed they were extinct," said LoPopolo. "A guy brought me this picture and he stood there and he said, 'These horses are believed to be Spanish horses.' And I basically told him 'That's interesting,' which is a diplomatic way of saying 'Do not bother me.'"

Isolated bands

But LoPopolo did a little research and constructed an inventory of horses brought to the Americas by the Europeans. Thanks to the Spaniards' meticulous record keeping, he tracked down most of des Onate's 900 horses and their eventual whereabouts.

But the Spaniard lost 30 of his horses from a farm in Espanola Valley, meaning it was at least possible for small bands of his horses and their descendants to survive by themselves for centuries in the wide open spaces of the Southwest.

And not only to survive -- but to do so with very little contact with humans or other horses.

So LoPopolo went in search of their descendants, seeking horses with a bloodline that ran directly from des Onate's horses to the present.

LoPopolo, founder and coordinator of the New Mexican Horse Project

"These are not just any wild horses," he said. "They are the closest thing we have to a native American horse, a horse upon which this country was built."

Part historian and part salesman, LoPopolo started the New Mexican Horse Project, recruiting volunteers and drumming up a shoestring budget. To find the horses, he strikes deals with ranchers and pueblos to round up wild horses so that blood samples can be taken for DNA analysis.

The plan is to take several of the horses that meet the bloodline test and set them free on a preserve to live and multiply.

To authenticate the DNA analyses, LoPopolo turned to Dr. Gus Cothran of the University of Kentucky, a top authority on equine DNA. Cothran has concluded that LoPopolo's horses are indeed direct descendants of those first horses on the continent.

A new home

LoPopolo and his band of volunteers are racing against time to save the horses, however. An initial estimate of 1,000 wild animals in New Mexico has been revised downward, he said, to 300 or 400.

And ranchers regularly capture the horses, which they consider nuisance animals, and sell them. But still the New Mexico Horse Project marches on, seeking money from state sources to help support what LoPopolo considers "national monuments."

Late last month, the project released its first band into the "wild" -- a 10,000-acre fenced preserve on land owned by the Campbell Farming Corporation.

"This is what we've worked for, busted our butts for," LoPopolo said as he watched a stallion, two mares and two foals stumble out of the horse trailers and race up a hill. "This is it. First time it's happening."

LoPopolo plans more releases, both on this land and in other parts of the state. No band, he said, will have more than 15 horses.

"They (horses) were here by the thousands," he said. "And now they're here by the tens and in some places by the ones. But that's going to change."

-- CNN Correspondent Bruce Burkhardt contributed to this report.