Early yesterday morning, three gentle giants wandered out of a corral in the Kent countryside to become the first wild bison to roam in Britain for thousands of years.
The aim is for the animals’ natural behavior to transform a dense commercial pine forest into a vibrant natural woodland. Their taste for bark would kill some trees and their bulk open up trails, letting light spill on to the forest floor, while their love of rolling around in dust baths would create more open ground.
All this should allow new plants, insects, lizards, birds and bats to thrive.
Photo: AFP
The Wilder Blean project, near Canterbury, is an experiment to see how well the bison can act as natural “ecosystem engineers” and restore wildlife.
England is one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world. A more natural woodland should also absorb more carbon, helping to tackle the climate crisis.
Global heating was evident as the bison were released, with England in the grip of a heat wave and the early timing was to allow the bison to reach the shade of the woods before temperatures started to climb.
European bison are the continent’s largest land animal — bulls can weigh 1 tonne — and were extinct in the wild a century ago, but are recovering through reintroduction projects across Europe.
“The restoration of naturally functioning ecosystems is a vital and inexpensive tool in tackling the climate crisis,” Kent Wildlife Trust chief executive Evan Bowen-Jones said. “We want Wilder Blean to mark the beginning of a new era for conservation in the UK. We need to revolutionize the way we restore natural landscapes, relying less on human intervention and more on natural engineers like bison, boar and beaver.”
“Not only this, but we’re giving people in the UK — for the first time in over a thousand years — the chance to experience bison in the wild. It’s a really powerful, emotional, visceral experience and it’s something we’ve lost in this country,” Wildwood Trust director-general Paul Whitfield said.
The three bison are an older female from the Highland wildlife park in Scotland, which will be the matriarch of the herd, plus two young females from Fota wildlife park in Cork, Ireland.
“We could not have asked for a better matriarch,” said Donovan Wright, one of two new bison rangers employed by the project. “She’s very, very calm, she’s very confident.”
They are to be joined by a young bull from Germany in the middle of next month, whose arrival was delayed by import complications related to Brexit.
The three females were fitted with tracking collars on Sunday, an approach that would allow the team to plot the animals’ movements and glean insights into the plants they interact with.
Wright said bison are like giant seed banks.
“As they move, they collect seeds, and then they [are] also dispersing seeds along the route,” he said.
At first the females would have a 5 hectare double fenced area to explore, but this is to increase to 50 hectares when the bull arrives. The animals would eventually have access to 200 hectares.
Visitors to Blean Woods might be able to catch a glimpse of the bison from trails, the team said.
Bison-sized tunnels are also being built to allow the animals to safely cross existing footpaths. They are contained by two fences, one of which is electric.
The bison in other UK wildlife parks are contained in smaller areas and receive supplementary feeding.
“I cannot wait to see how the bison start to shape the Blean over a five, 10, 20-year period as they settle into their new home and start throwing their weight around,” said Tom Gibbs, the other bison ranger.
The rangers have spent time at the Kraansvlak project in the Netherlands, where people can now walk freely through an area occupied by 14 bison. There has never been a dangerous incident.
The bison are soon to be joined by other grazing animals, including Exmoor ponies, iron age pigs and Longhorn cattle, whose natural behaviors compliment the bison in managing the landscape without the need for human intervention.
Their impact would be closely watched over the long term, including soil sampling and worm counts, examining the vegetation structure, and monitoring invertebrates, birds and mammals.
“If we can create diverse, dynamic, bio-abundant habitats in our crowded corner of the southeast, why shouldn’t we be doing it in our national parks and protected landscapes?” Kent Wildlife Trust director of conservation Paul Hadaway said.
The rangers expect the bison to breed, with females producing one calf a year, and the Wilder Blean site is licensed for up to 10 animals.
In the future, they hope to provide bison to found other sites in the UK, as well as exchanging animals across Europe.
All 7,000 bison living in Europe are descended from just 12 zoo animals and the species is still classed as vulnerable, so maximizing genetic diversity is very important.
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