Early on Monday morning, three gentle giants emerged from a fence in the Kent countryside to become the first wild bison to roam Britain for thousands of years.
The aim is to transform the natural behavior of the animals from a dense commercial pine forest into a vibrant natural forest. Their taste for bark will kill some trees and their mass will open up paths, letting light spill onto the forest floor, while their love of rolling in dust baths will create more open land. All this should allow new plants, insects, lizards, birds and bats to flourish.
The Wilder Blean Project, near Canterbury, is an experiment to see how well bison can act as natural ‘ecosystem engineers’ and restore wildlife. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.
A more natural forest should also absorb more carbon, helping to address the climate crisis. Global warming was evident when 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 forest shade before temperatures began to rise.
European bison are the largest land animal on the continent – bulls can weigh a ton – and were extinct in the wild a century ago, but are recovering through reintroduction projects across Europe.
“Restoring naturally functioning ecosystems is a vital and low-cost tool to tackle the climate crisis,” said Evan Bowen-Jones, chief executive of Kent Wildlife Trust (KWT). “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, wild boar and beaver.”
Paul Whitfield, director general of the Wildwood Trust, said: “Not only that, but we are 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, intuitive experience, and it’s something we’ve lost in this country.”
The three bison are an older female from Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland, who will be the matriarch of the herd, plus two young females from Fota Wildlife Park in Cork, Ireland. “We couldn’t have asked for a better matriarch,” said Donovan Wright, one of two new bison rangers hired on the project. “She’s very, very calm, she’s very confident.”
They will be joined by a young bull from Germany in mid-August, whose arrival has been delayed due to Brexit-related import complications.
The three females were fitted with tracking collars on Sunday, an approach that will allow the team to chart the animals’ movements and gather information about the plants they interact with. Wright said bison are like giant seed banks. “As they move, they collect seeds and then [are] also scatters seeds along the route.’
The females will initially have a five hectare double fenced research area, but this will increase to 50 hectares when the bull arrives. Eventually, the animals will have access to 200 hectares. Visitors to Blean Woods may be able to catch a glimpse of the bison from trails, the team said.
Tunnels the size of bison are also being built to allow the animals to safely cross existing footpaths. They are limited by two fences, one of which is electric. Bison in other UK wildlife parks are contained in smaller areas and receive supplementary feeding.
“I can’t wait to see how the bison start shaping Blaine 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.
Rangers have spent time at the Kraansvlak project in the Netherlands, where people can now walk freely in an area occupied by 14 bison. There has never been a dangerous accident.
Bison will soon be joined by other grazing animals, including Exmoor ponies, Iron Age pigs and Longhorn cattle, whose natural behavior complements bison in managing the landscape without the need for human intervention. Their impact will be closely monitored over the long term, including soil sampling and worm counts, vegetation structure studies, and invertebrate, bird and mammal monitoring.
“If we can create diverse, dynamic, biomass-rich habitats in our crowded corner of the South East, why not in our national parks and protected landscapes?” said Paul Haddaway, director of conservation at Kent Wildlife Trust.
Rangers expect the bison to reproduce, 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 secure bison to be found elsewhere in the UK as well as animal exchanges across Europe.
All 7,000 bison living in Europe are descended from just 12 animals in the zoo and the species is still classified as vulnerable, so increasing genetic diversity is very important. The £1.1m project has been funded by the People’s Postcode Lottery.
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