African Wild Ass!

The Wild Ass species is under no threat of extinction, but they are very critically endangered. These animals have been captured for domestication for many centuries, along with interbreeding between wild and domestic animals, it has caused a distinct decline in population. There are now only a few hundred individuals left in the world The Wild Ass is also hunted for food and traditional medicine in Ethiopia and Somalia. Competition with domestic livestock for grazing, restricted access to water supplies caused by agricultural developments pose further threats to the survival of the species. But the Wild Ass is legally protected in the countries where they are currently found.

There are about 150 individual Somali Wild Asses living in zoos around the globle of which 36 were born at Zoo Basel,^[9] where this species's breeding program started with Basel's first Somali wild asses in 1970 and the first birth in 1972.^[10]
Zoo Basel manages the European studbook for the Somali wild ass and coordinates the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP).^[11] All European and American wild donkeys are either descendants of the original group at Zoo Basel or of 12 others that came from the Yotvata Hai-Bar Nature Reserve in Israel in 1972.