The Equine Legacy Conservation Project

For the last five years, a writer, photographer, and videographer have been travelling the world together to capture the stories of endangered and rare horse breeds.

By capturing photo and video of these horses in their natural environments, the team hopes to raise awareness about not just these unique breeds, but about all of the hundreds of horse breeds currently at risk of extinction.

Their journey took them to seven countries, documenting:

Scroll to continue with content

the Fell Pony in Cumbria, England
the Clydesdale in Lanarkshire, Scotland
the Marwari horse in Rajasthan, India
the Paso Fino on the island of Puerto Rico
the Mountain Pleasure Horse in Kentucky, USA
the Kladruber in Pardubice, Czechia
the Sorraia horse in Santarem, Portugal

Their work is collectively known as the Equine Legacy Conservation Project and has been published as a coffee table book, titled Fading Hoofprints, and documentary series. The first episode launched February 2025 with new episodes being released each week, available through a QR code to those who have purchased the book.

Minh Dan Vu, the team’s photographer, first started working on the project in 2020. She said was motivated to create the Equine Legacy Conservation Project because she wanted “to use the power of photography to contribute to a problem that is quite worldwide.”

In 2021, Dan Vu connected with Valerie de Vries and Alieke Datema to join the project as a writer and videographer, respectively. Dan Vu and de Vries went to high school together, and they met Datema via Instagram.

The team completed extensive research for the project, drawing on information from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Livestock Conservancy, and Equus Survival Trust. Dan Vu said the team was surprised by some of what they learned, including that there were so many horse breeds in general, and that almost a third of those breeds are endangered.

Currently, there are an estimated 60 million horses in the world. While the exact number of horse breeds worldwide is uncertain – and could be impacted by a lack of reporting from certain regions – as of 2022, the FAO put the number at 700 breeds. According to the FAO, 101 horse breeds have gone extinct, and a further 308 breeds (33%) are at risk. Many of these breeds are disappearing due to the industrialization of farming practices, political issues, and aging breeders. Additional threats come from the effects of climate change, which can impact horses through deteriorating effects on water, soil, and air quality as well as the loss of habitat.

This is the driving force behind the Equine Legacy Conservation Project, whose mission is to raise awareness about the endangered breeds, educate people about them, and inspire conservation efforts for these breeds before they’re gone forever.

“Every horse breed has a unique genetic puzzle inside them, and once you are losing this piece of the puzzle because they’re going extinct, it’s very hard to understand the history of the overall equine diversity,” Dan Vu said. “It’s such a shame if this will disappear, because it’s not something that could ever be retrieved again.”

From their research, the team decided to narrow the project’s focus to seven breeds, each one highlighting something different in the horse world: a Baroque type (Kladruber), a pony (Fell Pony), a gaited horse (Mountain Pleasure Horse), et cetera.

Three young women with cameras and notepads.

The team behind the project: Alieke (left), Minh (middle), Valerie (right).

“Every type has their own unique role and history,” Dan Vu said. “For example, draft horses…. we picked the Clydesdale, but many other draft horses face the same issues, which is that the agriculture role they used to have is gone, because we are now using machines.”

The book and documentary series provide a deep dive into each breed, Dan Vu said, “giving them a platform so that other people can get inspired by the horses, by the stories of the breeders, by the landscape.”

The experience travelling together and capturing the stories was “absolutely incredible,” Dan Vu said. “I loved learning about the breeds. I love talking with the people who dedicated their lives for the preservation of the breed.”

Even though not every travelling experience went smoothly or quite as planned, it taught them to just “go with the flow,” Dan Vu said. It helped that she, de Vries and Datema not only work together, but are also great friends.

“We laugh a lot with each other…. it was just lovely travelling with them,” Dan Vu said.

She hopes that when people engage with the project, whether that’s flipping through the coffee table book or watching the documentary, they come away from it with a “sense of awe” and “inspiration.”

She’d like to see the project give people an “appreciation not only the beauty of these horses, but also their incredibly rich history, their role, their bonds that they formed with their humans.”

“I hope with this project that the more people who get inspired this way, the more awareness there will be for these breeds,” Dan Vu said. “And the more people know of them, the more conservation projects will be happening in regards of breeding or education.”

Every person that knows about them, Dan Vu said, “will help continue the legacy of this breed.”