Strength and Power: The World of Heavy Horse Breeds

26 January 2026

The heavy horse breeds, meaning the Shires, Clydesdales, Suffolks, Percherons and their Continental cousins, built the working agricultural economies of Britain, Ireland and Europe for the better part of a thousand years. They ploughed the fields, towed the canal barges, pulled the brewery drays, hauled timber out of ground too soft for tractors, and carried armoured knights into battle. Mechanisation pushed almost every one of them to the edge of extinction by the 1960s, and several remain there today on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust watchlist.

This guide profiles the major draught horse breeds found in British yards today, explains the real differences between the British natives and the Continental types, covers what a heavy horse is actually like to keep and ride, and sets out what the RBST watchlist categories mean now that the Trust has changed how it classifies breeds. Where a breed has a full profile in our database, we have linked to it.

What Defines a Heavy Horse?

"Heavy horse", "draught horse" and "cold-blood" are overlapping terms for the same general type. There is no single governing definition, but the working characteristics are consistent:

Mature weight: typically 750 kg upwards, with the largest individuals of the biggest breeds exceeding 1,000 kg
Height: usually 16 to 18.2 hands, with show-bred Shire stallions occasionally exceeding 19 hh
Bone: around 28 cm (11 inches) or more measured around the cannon bone, against roughly 20 to 22 cm in a Thoroughbred. Bone measurement is the single most useful number for telling a genuine heavy horse from a big riding horse
Temperament: deliberately bred for a calm, biddable, willing nature. Handling a one-tonne animal in harness demands it
Conformation: short coupled, broad chested, powerfully muscled hindquarters, a sloping shoulder suited to collar work, a deep girth and generous withers
Movement: long, deliberate and low, efficient for sustained pulling rather than speed

"Cold-blood" is the older European term distinguishing heavy draught horses from "hot-blood" types such as the Arabian and Thoroughbred, and from the warmbloods bred by crossing the two. It refers to temperament and origin, not to literal blood temperature, and it is worth knowing because Continental studbooks still use it.

Native British Heavy Horse Breeds

The British Isles produced three indigenous heavy horse breeds, and all three are on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust watchlist. If you want the wider picture of what else these islands produced, our guide to British horse breeds covers the ponies and sport types alongside them.

Shire Horse

The Shire is the largest British breed and the most internationally recognised heavy horse. It was developed in the English Midlands, chiefly Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Leicestershire and Derbyshire, from the medieval "great horse" and the Flemish and Friesian heavy types imported from the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. The Shire Horse Society was founded in 1878 and is among the oldest breed societies in the world.

Height: 16.2 hh upwards, stallions typically around 17.2 hh, with the tallest individuals exceeding 19 hh
Weight: roughly 850 to 1,100 kg
Colours: bay, brown, black and grey
Distinguishing features: heavy white feather on the lower legs, commonly a broad blaze and white stockings
RBST status: At Risk

The tallest horse in recorded history was a Shire: Sampson, later renamed Mammoth, foaled in 1846 at Toddington Mills in Bedfordshire and recorded at 21.2½ hh. We have covered Sampson's record and the myths attached to it separately, along with the tallest horses of the modern era. For a fuller treatment of the breed itself, see our Shire horse profile.

Clydesdale

The Clydesdale was developed in Lanarkshire, in the valley of the River Clyde, during the eighteenth century by crossing local Scottish draught mares with imported Flemish stallions. It became the standard Scottish farm and timber horse and was exported in very large numbers to Australia, Canada and North America, where the Budweiser eight-horse hitches later gave the breed a global profile it never quite had at home.

Height: 16.2 to 18.0 hh
Weight: roughly 820 to 1,000 kg
Colours: bay most commonly, also brown, black, chestnut, grey and roan
Distinguishing features: tall white socks, abundant silky feather, often a wide blaze, and a higher and more animated trot than the Shire
RBST status: At Risk

Our Clydesdale breed overview goes further into the breed's showing traditions and its export history.

Suffolk Punch

The Suffolk Punch, known in its own studbook simply as the Suffolk Horse, is the oldest documented British heavy breed. Every registered Suffolk traces in the male line to a single stallion, Crisp's Horse of Ufford, foaled in 1768. The breed was developed exclusively in East Anglia and is unusual among the heavies in being entirely chestnut, spelled "chesnut" without the middle t by long-standing Suffolk Horse Society tradition.

Height: 16.1 to 17.2 hh, shorter than the Shire or Clydesdale but extraordinarily heavy for its height
Weight: roughly 900 to 1,000 kg
Colour: always chestnut, in seven recognised shades from dark liver to bright
Distinguishing features: clean legs with very little feather, a deliberate East Anglian preference for working heavy clay, and short legs in proportion to a deep, barrel-shaped body
RBST status: Priority

The Suffolk is the most genuinely endangered of the British heavy horses and one of the rarest native breeds of any species in the UK. There is, however, real good news: the RBST reported that the Suffolk's effective population size rose in 2025 for the third consecutive year, which is the measure that matters most for a breed with a very narrow founding base. The Suffolk Horse Society and the Suffolk Punch Trust at Hollesley Bay run active conservation breeding programmes. Our Suffolk horse breed guide covers the breed's working history in more depth, and it appears in our round-up of the rarest horse breeds in the world.

The Percheron in Britain

The Percheron originated in the Perche region of north-western France, where it was used for heavy draught, coach work and as a cavalry remount. Percherons were brought into Britain in numbers around the First World War, and the British Percheron Horse Society was founded in 1918. The breed is now thoroughly naturalised here and is a mainstay of British heavy horse showing and turnout classes, helped by the fact that its clean legs are far less work than a feathered breed's.

Height: 16.2 to 17.3 hh, with the French strain often taller
Weight: roughly 900 to 1,100 kg
Colours: grey or black in the British studbook
Distinguishing features: clean legs with no feather, a notably more refined head than the Shire, and free, easy action
RBST status: not listed, as the RBST watchlist covers native British breeds

See our Percheron breed guide for temperament, care and buying considerations.

The Irish Draught: The Lightest of the Heavies

Most heavy horse round-ups skip the Irish Draught entirely, which is a mistake. It is a genuine draught breed by origin and name, bred as an all-purpose farm horse that could plough on Monday, take the family to Mass on Sunday and hunt in between. What makes it different is that it was never bred for maximum bulk. Irish farms were small and feed was scarce, so the breed was selected for economy of keep and athleticism as much as for pulling power.

Height: 15.1 to 16.3 hh
Weight: roughly 600 to 800 kg, considerably lighter than the British heavies
Colours: any solid colour, most commonly grey, bay, brown and chestnut
Distinguishing features: clean, flat, hard limbs with no coarse feather, good bone without heaviness, and a naturally athletic jump

The Irish Draught is the reason this section matters to anyone actually shopping for a horse. Crossed with the Thoroughbred it produces the Irish Sport Horse, which has dominated international eventing for decades. If you want heavy horse temperament and bone in something you can realistically compete, this is the breed to look at first. Our guide to the Irish Draught as an all-rounder covers the crossing in detail.

Continental European Heavy Horse Breeds

Europe produced a far wider range of regional draught horses than most British owners realise, and several now appear in UK yards.

Belgian Draught (Brabant)

The Belgian Draught, called the Brabant in its country of origin, is among the heaviest horses in the world by average mature weight. The breed diverged during the twentieth century into the Continental Brabant, which stayed close to the original thick-set farm type, and the American Belgian, which was bred taller, leaner and more refined for the show ring and for pulling competitions. Most of the individual horses that have held modern weight records have been American Belgians rather than Brabants, which is worth knowing before you buy on the strength of a record.

Height: 16.2 to 17.0 hh
Weight: roughly 900 to 1,100 kg for the Brabant, 800 to 1,000 kg for the American Belgian
Colours: chestnut with flaxen mane and tail is typical in the American Belgian; bay, roan and chestnut in the Brabant

Ardennais (Ardennes)

The Ardennais is one of the oldest documented draught types in Europe, with Roman-era written references to the heavy horses of the Ardennes forest. It is compact, exceptionally powerful for its height, and was used heavily through both World Wars for artillery haulage. The type spread widely and produced regional offshoots including the Swedish Ardennes, which is still used for forestry work in Scandinavia.

Height: 15.0 to 16.0 hh, shorter than the British heavies
Weight: roughly 700 to 1,000 kg
Colours: bay, roan, chestnut, palomino and grey

Comtois

The Comtois comes from the Jura mountains on the French and Swiss border and is one of the more numerous French draught breeds. Its sure-footedness on steep ground made it the standard mountain forestry horse, and it is still worked in the Jura and the Alps. It is smaller and lighter than the British heavies, which makes it one of the more realistic "small heavy horse" options for an owner without a lorry and a fourteen-foot box.

Boulonnais

An elegant, usually grey French breed sometimes called the "White Marble Horse" for its refined head and dappled coat. The Boulonnais once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across northern France. Its breeding heartland sat directly on the Western Front, and the breed never recovered from the First World War. It is now critically endangered in France.

Breton

Brittany's regional draught horse, divided into the heavier Trait Breton and the lighter, faster Postier Breton which was bred for coach and artillery work. See the Breton horse profile for the distinction between the two types.

Dutch Draft, Jutland and Noriker

Three further Continental heavies are worth knowing by name. The Dutch Draft is a relatively modern breed, established after the First World War from Zeeland mares crossed with Belgian and Ardennes stock, and is one of the most massively built horses in Europe. The Jutland is Denmark's chestnut draught breed, closely related to the Suffolk through shared nineteenth-century bloodlines, and still pulls the Carlsberg drays in Copenhagen. The Noriker, or Pinzgauer, is the Alpine mountain draught horse of Austria and Bavaria, notable for a leopard-spotted colour variety found in almost no other heavy breed.

Heavy Horse Breeds Compared by Size

Sorted from tallest to smallest. Height and weight ranges for heavy breeds vary more than for riding horses, because show-bred and working-bred lines within the same breed can differ substantially.

Breed	Origin	Height	Weight	Feather	Colours	RBST status
Shire	English Midlands	16.2 to 19+ hh	850 to 1,100 kg	Heavy	Bay, brown, black, grey	At Risk
Clydesdale	Lanarkshire, Scotland	16.2 to 18.0 hh	820 to 1,000 kg	Heavy, silky	Bay, roan, brown, chestnut	At Risk
Percheron	Perche, France	16.2 to 17.3 hh	900 to 1,100 kg	None	Grey or black (UK)	Not listed
Suffolk Punch	East Anglia	16.1 to 17.2 hh	900 to 1,000 kg	Minimal	Chestnut only	Priority
Belgian Draught	Brabant, Belgium	16.2 to 17.0 hh	900 to 1,100 kg	Light	Chestnut, bay, roan	Not listed
Dutch Draft	Netherlands	15.2 to 17.0 hh	800 to 1,000 kg	Light	Bay, chestnut, grey, roan	Not listed
Jutland	Jutland, Denmark	15.0 to 16.1 hh	700 to 900 kg	Moderate	Chestnut, usually flaxen	Not listed
Boulonnais	Northern France	15.3 to 16.3 hh	700 to 900 kg	None	Predominantly grey	Not listed
Noriker	Austria and Bavaria	15.2 to 16.2 hh	650 to 850 kg	Light	Bay, chestnut, roan, leopard spotted	Not listed
Ardennais	Ardennes, France and Belgium	15.0 to 16.0 hh	700 to 1,000 kg	Moderate	Bay, roan, chestnut, grey	Not listed
Irish Draught	Ireland	15.1 to 16.3 hh	600 to 800 kg	None	Any solid colour	Irish designation
Comtois	Jura, France	14.3 to 16.0 hh	650 to 800 kg	Light	Chestnut with flaxen	Not listed

Breeds Often Mistaken for Heavy Horses

Three breeds come up constantly in heavy horse searches and none of them is a draught breed. The distinction matters if you are buying, because their care, workload tolerance and price are all different.

Friesian: black, feathered and imposing, so it reads as a heavy horse at a glance. It is in fact a light harness and riding breed from the Netherlands, typically 15.3 to 16.2 hh and around 600 kg. Friesian ancestry did contribute to the Shire and other British heavies, which is the root of the confusion.
Gypsy Vanner, also called the Irish Cob or Traditional Cob: heavily feathered, broad and usually piebald or skewbald. It is a cob rather than a draught horse, bred to pull a living wagon at a working trot rather than to plough. Usually 13.2 to 15.2 hh. Our guide to cob horses covers the type properly.
Cleveland Bay: Britain's oldest native horse breed, always bay, always clean legged. It is a carriage and riding horse, not a heavy horse, though it is frequently listed as one. It is on the RBST watchlist as a Priority breed, making it rarer than the Shire. See our Cleveland Bay breed profile.

If you are trying to place a breed in the wider picture, our introduction to horse breeds sets out how the draught, warmblood and hot-blood groups relate to one another, and the biggest horse breeds guide ranks by sheer size rather than by working type.

A Short History of Heavy Horses in Britain

Medieval England relied on the "great horse", a heavy mount capable of carrying an armoured rider, his weapons and his barding. By the Tudor period these horses were increasingly being diverted to civilian work, and Henry VIII legislated directly to keep horse size up: the Breed of Horses Act of 1535 and a further act in 1540 set minimum heights for stallions turned out on common land. Our features on war horse breeds through history and the jousting horse cover that military ancestry in detail, including the persistent myth that the medieval warhorse was a Shire.

By the eighteenth century three distinct regional working types had emerged: the Shire in the Midlands, the Suffolk in East Anglia and the Clydesdale in Scotland. The Industrial Revolution then increased demand enormously. Canal towing, brewery delivery, railway shunting and urban carting all needed heavy horses by the tens of thousands, and London alone supported something in the order of 300,000 working horses at the turn of the twentieth century.

The First World War took very large numbers of British heavy horses to the Western Front for artillery haulage and supply, and many never came back. Our account of the horses of the First World War covers what that cost the breeds. Mechanisation between 1920 and 1960 then finished the job: within two generations a breed like the Suffolk fell from a national population in the hundreds of thousands to a few hundred breeding animals.

Modern Working Uses for Heavy Horses

Heavy horses are still genuinely worked in Britain, though the number of commercial operations has shrunk sharply even in the last decade.

Brewery Drays

This is the use most people picture, and it is now down to two breweries in the UK making genuine commercial deliveries by horse-drawn dray.

Hook Norton Brewery, Oxfordshire keeps a team of Shires and delivers to local pubs. Its Victorian stable block, built in 1894, reopened in February 2026 after eighteen months of restoration following a fire.
Samuel Smith's Old Brewery, Tadcaster works a team of dapple-grey Shires stabled behind the Angel & White Horse, delivering around Tadcaster several days a week. They are among the last working dray teams anywhere.

The direction of travel is worth being honest about. Wadworth of Devizes, whose Shires had been a fixture of the town for close to 150 years and which once ran more than forty of them, retired its dray team in 2025 after a brewery relocation made town-centre deliveries impractical. The horses were rehomed in Wales. Any list of brewery teams older than a couple of years should be treated as out of date.

Forestry and Conservation Work

Horse logging is the one modern use where the horse is not merely traditional but technically better than the machine. On Sites of Special Scientific Interest, ancient woodland and steep or waterlogged ground, a horse extracts timber without the soil compaction, root damage and access tracks a forwarder requires. Contractors work in the New Forest, the Lake District, parts of Wales and across Scotland. Heavy horses are also used in conservation grazing and in mowing and turning hay on species-rich meadows where machinery would be too destructive or too heavy.

Showing, Ploughing and Ceremonial

Heavy horse turnout, in-hand and ridden classes remain a major draw at the Royal Highland Show, the Great Yorkshire Show, the Royal Welsh and the South of England Show, and the Shire Horse Society holds its own National Show each spring. Ploughing matches keep working skills alive at local level. Ceremonial heavy horses appear in civic processions and at agricultural shows, and the Household Cavalry's drum horses are the best known ceremonial heavy type in Britain, though they are usually Shire or Clydesdale crosses rather than purebreds.

Riding a Heavy Horse: What Actually Works

Yes, heavy horses can be ridden, and Percherons and Clydesdales in particular have become popular with adult riders who want a calm, substantial mount. But the assumption behind most searches on this, that a bigger horse automatically carries more weight, needs qualifying.

The rule of thumb is proportional, not absolute. The commonly used guideline is that a horse carries up to around 20 per cent of its own bodyweight including tack, with 15 per cent a more conservative figure for sustained work. On a 900 kg Shire that is a large allowance, but it is the horse's build, fitness and back length that decide the real answer, not the number on the weighbridge.
Bone and back matter more than height. A short-coupled, well-muscled 16 hh Suffolk will carry weight better than a long-backed 18 hh horse of the same weight. Ask about bone measurement and look at the topline.
Saddle fitting is the real obstacle. Heavy horse backs are broad and flat with low withers, and a standard tree simply will not fit. You will need a saddle made for the shape, and a qualified fitter with heavy horse experience. Budget for this before you buy the horse.
They are not built for speed or height. Hacking, hunting, trekking, driving and low-level dressage all suit them. Serious jumping and fast work do not. If you want a heavy-horse temperament in a competitive package, the Irish Draught or an Irish Sport Horse cross is the sensible route.
Running costs are higher. Feed, bedding, shoeing, rugs, transport and veterinary doses all scale with bodyweight.

Care Considerations for Heavy Horses

Feed: heavy horses are not high-energy athletes. Most hold weight on good forage plus a low-energy chaff or a balancer. Keep sugar and starch moderate to low. Overfeeding a native heavy is a genuine risk factor for laminitis.
Feather management: feathered breeds need daily checking. Trapped moisture under heavy feather is the classic setup for mud fever and pastern dermatitis. Wash only when necessary, dry thoroughly, and treat scabs promptly rather than picking at them.
Chronic progressive lymphoedema: a progressive swelling and skin thickening of the lower legs seen particularly in Shires, Clydesdales and Belgians. It cannot be cured, only managed, and early recognition makes a large difference. Any persistent lower-leg swelling in a feathered breed warrants a vet, not another tub of mud fever cream.
Muscle disorders: polysaccharide storage myopathy and related myopathies occur in several Continental draught breeds, and shivers is disproportionately common in tall draught horses. Both are diet and management responsive to a degree, and both need proper diagnosis.
Hoof care: large feet need an experienced farrier, and not every farrier will take heavy horses. A Shire shoe is several times the weight of a riding horse shoe. Book well ahead.
Transport: a standard trailer is rarely adequate. Assume a full-size lorry with a partition sized for the horse.
Stabling: around 14 ft by 14 ft (4.3 m by 4.3 m) is the practical minimum box for a Shire, with doorways and ceiling height to match.

Conservation: What the RBST Watchlist Actually Says

This is where a lot of published information about heavy horses is out of date, including plenty that is still circulating on breed pages and in AI-generated summaries. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust used to run a multi-tier watchlist with categories such as Critical, Endangered and Vulnerable, assigned according to registered breeding female numbers. It no longer does.

The current RBST watchlist uses two levels of concern:

Priority: breeds of most concern, being both rare and showing increased inbreeding. Among equines this includes the Suffolk, the Cleveland Bay, the Dales Pony, the Eriskay, the Exmoor and the Hackney.
At Risk: breeds with lower numbers than ideal and a degree of inbreeding that gives cause for concern. Among equines this includes the Shire and the Clydesdale, alongside the Dartmoor, Fell, Highland, New Forest and Welsh Section B.
UK native breed: the remaining native breeds, not currently classed as at risk.

Two practical points follow from the change. First, the RBST no longer publishes simple headcount thresholds for each category, so any source quoting a category as "under 300 breeding mares" or similar is describing a system that has been retired. Assessment now weighs population size together with genetic diversity, using effective population size as a central measure. The FAO treats an effective population size of 50 as the threshold below which a breed is a concern, and that figure is a far better guide to a breed's real position than a raw headcount.

Second, the categories move. The Clydesdale is currently At Risk rather than in a more severe category, and the Suffolk's effective population size has risen three years running. Conservation status is a live figure, not a permanent label, and it is worth checking the RBST watchlist directly rather than relying on a breed article, including this one, for a current classification.

Practical support looks like this: buy or breed registered stock, use a registered stallion, keep the breed societies solvent through membership, and turn up to the shows and ploughing matches where these horses still earn their keep. Semen and genetic material banks run by the RBST provide the insurance policy underneath all of it.

Where to See Heavy Horses in the UK

Working heavy horses are easier to find in person than most people assume, and visiting is a direct contribution to keeping the breeds going.

Dorset Heavy Horse Farm Park, Verwood, Dorset: a rescue and visitor centre with a large resident group of heavies
Northcote Heavy Horse Centre, Spilsby, Lincolnshire: a rescue and rehabilitation centre open to visitors
Hay Farm Heavy Horse Centre, Northumberland: a working centre focused on the three British native breeds
Cumbria Heavy Horses, near Millom: heavy horse riding and beach rides in the Lake District
The Suffolk Punch Trust, Hollesley Bay, Suffolk: conservation breeding for the rarest of the British heavies
Hook Norton Brewery, Oxfordshire: stable tours alongside the working dray team

The Shire Horse Society National Show in spring and the heavy horse classes at the major county and national shows through the summer are the best chance to see numbers of them turned out and working in harness. Check opening times and show schedules before travelling, as several centres run seasonally.

Heavy Horses in South Africa

South African readers should set expectations accordingly: heavy horses are genuinely scarce here. There is no indigenous South African draught breed, the national horse population is dominated by the Boerperd, Thoroughbred, Warmblood and Arabian, and the small number of Percherons, Shires and Clydesdales in the country are almost all descended from limited historical imports or privately imported stock.

The practical consequences for a South African owner are worth thinking through before you go looking. The gene pool is small enough that finding an unrelated registered mate is a real constraint. Saddlery, rugs and harness in heavy horse sizes are largely an import problem. Farriers experienced with feet that size are not evenly distributed. And the climate is a genuine factor: heavily feathered breeds developed for a cool, wet northern European climate are not naturally suited to a Highveld summer or a humid coastal belt, and they need managing accordingly, with particular attention to the lower legs. A clean-legged breed such as the Percheron is a considerably more sensible starting point in most South African conditions than a Shire.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the heaviest horse breed?

By average mature weight the Shire, the Belgian Draught (Brabant) and the Percheron are the heaviest breeds, all routinely reaching 900 to 1,100 kg with individual stallions above that. Record-holding individual horses in the modern era have most often been American Belgians. The Suffolk Punch deserves a mention here too: it is shorter than the Shire and Clydesdale but carries comparable weight, which makes it the densest of the British heavies for its height.

What are the main heavy horse breeds in Britain?

The three native British heavy horse breeds are the Shire from the English Midlands, the Clydesdale from Lanarkshire in Scotland and the Suffolk Punch from East Anglia. The Percheron, originally French, has been bred here since the First World War and is governed by the British Percheron Horse Society, so it is generally counted as a naturalised British heavy horse. All three native breeds are on the RBST watchlist: the Suffolk as a Priority breed, the Shire and Clydesdale as At Risk.

Which is bigger, a Shire or a Clydesdale?

The Shire, on both counts. It is taller at the top of its range and heavier on average, with more massive bone and a broader, deeper body. Clydesdales are slightly lighter and more refined, with a higher and more animated action and characteristically flashier white markings, including tall socks and a broad blaze. Clydesdale feather tends to be silkier, Shire feather coarser and more abundant. The two are easily confused at a distance, and colour is no help: both come in bay.

Which horse breeds are best for carrying heavier riders?

Percherons, Clydesdales, Irish Draughts and heavy cobs are the usual answers, and Percherons have the practical edge because clean legs mean far less daily maintenance. The important qualification is that weight-carrying ability comes from build rather than height: a short-backed, well-muscled, fit horse with good bone carries weight better than a taller, longer-backed animal of the same weight. The common guideline is up to roughly 20 per cent of the horse's bodyweight including tack, with 15 per cent safer for regular work. Get a saddle fitter involved early, because fitting a broad, low-withered back is the part that catches most buyers out.

Can a Shire horse be ridden?

Yes. Ridden Shire classes exist at the major shows and plenty of Shires hack, hunt and trek. They suit steady work rather than speed or jumping, they need a saddle made for a heavy horse back, and they need conditioning like any other riding horse rather than being assumed fit because they are large. Expect a slower, longer stride and a horse that takes more leg than a sport type.

Why are Suffolk Punches always chestnut?

Because every registered Suffolk descends in the male line from one chestnut stallion, Crisp's Horse of Ufford, foaled in 1768, and East Anglian breeders then selected for the colour deliberately as part of the breed's identity. The breed standard recognises seven shades from dark liver to bright, and the Suffolk Horse Society traditionally spells the colour "chesnut" without the middle t. The narrow founding base is also precisely why the breed's effective population size, rather than its headcount, is the number conservationists watch.