Kiskunság National Park to modernize six native animal farms

(Photo: Pixabay)

Mónika Kiss, head of the ecotourism and environmental education department of the Kiskunság National Park Directorate (KNPI), said: the aim of the project is to improve the infrastructure conditions necessary for the directorate’s nature conservation area management and gene conservation activities while ensuring the habitats are undisturbed. He explained that the investment, implemented in a consortium between the national park and the Ministry of Construction and Transport, will develop and modernize the native livestock farms under the management of the directorate – Izsáki, Izsák-Páhi, Bugaci, Fülöpszállás-Kígyóshát, Pusztaszeri and Bösztörpuszta-Nagyállás – and acquire new power and working machines. The head of department emphasized that the directorate’s priority task is the genetic preservation of native domestic animals. They play a decisive role in the breeding of the Hungarian domestic buffalo, the Hungarian grey cattle and the Furioso North-Star – the Mezőhegyes half-blood – horse. The maintenance of native domestic domestic animal breeds serves both genetic preservation and nature protection through grazing, he added.

The Directorate has been involved in the breeding of Hungarian grey cattle and its use for nature conservation purposes since the mid-1990s.

Among the old domestic breeds, grey cattle were the first to be protected as a first-class gene reserve, which is domestically bred, linked to the domestic landscape, and a purebred stock sufficiently separated from other breeds – he added. The head of the department reminded that the Furioso-North Star horse breed was declared a national treasure in 2004. Due to its low number of individuals, which means around 500 breeding mares and 80 breeding stallions, it is classified as a protected native domestic breed. The Kiskunság National Park Directorate began breeding the breed in 2009, when they joined the Furioso-North Star Horse Breeding Association with two mares. The primary goal of keeping their current horse population is land management and breed improvement, based on classic Mezőhegyes principles. The project, which aims to modernize the native livestock farms, is expected to be completed in the summer of 2029.

MTI