Endangered Refers to those dam lines, strains, and/or substrains for which there are 15 or fewer mares remaining within AK. These strains, strain/substrains, and/or dam lines are in danger of being lost if immediate steps are not taken.

Rare Refers to those dam lines, strains, and/or substrains for which there are 50 or fewer mares remaining within AK. These strains, strain/substrains, and/or dam lines are in danger of being lost although the danger is not as immediate as it is for those identified as Endangered .

Watch Refers to those dam lines, strains, and/or substrains for which there are 51 to 100 mares remaining in AK. Although these strains, strain/substrains, and/or dam lines are not in immediate danger of being lost to AK, it is important that emphasis is placed in replacing these mares within AK when breeding so that they will never be identified as being in danger of being lost to AK.

Safe Refers to those dam lines, strains, and/or substrains which are (currently) well represented within the population of AK horses.

Needs Research Refers to those dam lines, strains, and/or substrains for which the status is unknown at this time. The 2003 AK directory was used to determine which dam lines were 'safe' and the strains/dam lines identified as 'Needs Research' were not clearly Safe This does not mean that these dam lines/strains are definitely rare, only that there was not enough information to determine if they are rare or not.

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