Pantesco
The Pantesco or Asino di Pantelleria is an Italian breed of donkey from the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria, south-west of Sicily. It is at high risk of extinction; its conservation status was listed as "critical" in 2007. It is one of the eight autochthonous donkey breeds of limited distribution recognised by the Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali, the Italian ministry of agriculture and forestry.
History
The Pantesco originates in – and is named for – the island of Pantelleria, which lies to the south-west of Sicily, though closer to the North African coast. Its ancestry may include animals from both Sicily and Africa, as well as stock brought to the island during the five hundred years of Arab rule. It was in the past used by the people of the island both as a beast of burden and as a riding animal; jacks from the island were much in demand for siring mules, and were exported both to Sicily and to various parts of the Maghreb.In the early twentieth century the population of the donkeys on the island was not large, numbering barely head. It was further much reduced by the events of the Second World War, particularly the devastation wrought by Allied forces in 1943; a census in 1951 found about 180 donkeys in all, many of them showing little resemblance to the original type. With the crisis in donkey-breeding brought about by the mechanisation of agriculture in the post-War years, numbers fell still further; with the death of the last pure-bred jack in the 1980s, the Pantesco was close to extinction.
A recovery project was launched in 1989 by the i=no – the forestry administration of Sicily – with the participation of the i=no and the faculty of veterinary medicine of the University of Milan. A search was conducted throughout the island of Sicily for donkeys with significant Pantesco ancestry; nine such animals – three jacks and six jennies, with a percentage of Pantesco blood ranging from – were identified, moved to the i=no, a state-owned woodland on the slopes of Monte Erice, and were bred together to re-establish the breed. A secondary conservation herd was established in the Riserva naturale dello Zingaro, on the eastern coast of.
The conservation status of the breed was listed as "critical" by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2007; in 2025 it was listed in DAD-IS as "at risk/critical". Between 2008 and 2023 the reported population remained in the range 64–88 head.