Does anyone know if Heck cattle or Heck horses are kept in the USA? Whether it's in zoos or other places? For that matter, are they still common in Europe? I know there was (is?) controversy over the breeding back of these animals to recreate their extinct counterparts.
In the US they're mostly back to calling the breed the tarpan/restoration tarpan. The Tarpan Horse Conservation Program website, The Tarpan Horse Conservation Program In – The Tarpan Horse Conservation Program Inc, lists Shalom Wildlife as the only US zoo, plus Magnetic Hill Zoo in New Brunswick and a few breeders who are open by appointment.
I believe that most - if not all - of the remaining animals in the USA have had a *lot* of fresh domestic blood added over the years to counter the extreme inbreeding borne of the fact only five or six "original" Munich Heck bloodline founders were exported to North America, so they now look pretty different to the Munich Heck animals over here in Europe, although they do still contain Heck blood. Of course, there haven't been any Berlin Heck bloodline animals since WWII and neither are anything like the "genuine" Tarpan in any case.
