Wilder Blean Bison Release: The Start Of A New Era Of Conservation

[@genevievebailey4352]

projects like this bring so much hope for the future of UK ecology

[@BamulOi]

Awesome stuff, I'm so glad the UK is step-by-step becoming a little wilder again. In Poland there are over 2000 free-roaming herds of European bison (with an additional 200 living in captivity), Belarus has almost the same numbers iirc. I really hope one day the UK will be the same, so that the zubr here will be more numerous in the wild than in zoos. Fingers crossed more people and organisations will be inspired to follow in your footsteps with similar initiatives. Great work, well done all of you!

[@sarahkent23]

Amazing project! It will be exciting to see what the future holds.

[@annriding2885]

Just wonderful to see the bison emerging and to know they will help all the wild life in the wood. I found it very moving. Thank you for doing something positive to help the natural world.

[@geraintmatthews6550]

Huge congratulations to all involved. A groundbreaking project for the UK. I would love to be involved in a project like this one day. I'm very jealous, but really looking forward to hearing updates on how this project and the bison are getting on.

[@heavenlybubbles12]

Fantastic to see these majestic animals stepping into their new habitat. Brilliant work. Thank you all 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@victoryactivitiestv]

this is awesome, thanks for sharing

[@gandrews9683]

Fantastic news! It has been long coming. Hopefully the first of many bison projects here in the UK.

[@runningcafe1]

It was very emotional stuff to see the matriarch and the other females come out so confidently into their new home. Fantastic work KWT

[@CKent78]

Lovely to see. Hope they have a safe journey and humans don't ruin it. ♥️

[@SandDancing]

Thank you so much for all you had done over the years to bring the bison to their new home. It was so amazing to see the matriarch lead her two young ones into the woods in such a calm, yet curious way. It says a lot about how you have looked after them. It feels great to be part of bringing this moment to fruition by being a KWT and Wildwood member.

[@jenedwards94]

Such an amazing and exciting project. What wonderful animals - I do hope other areas of the UK are inspired to fall;ow your great example. Congratulations on such a moving and important project. Thank you ...

[@carolattenborough5221]

Just watched the amazing footage of the bison herd being released into Blean Woods - made my day. Many thanks to all reminders you do a fantastic job for all of us.

[@jennyblackburn1027]

All good!

[@belovedmotoangel02]

Amazing!! 😍😍🥰❤️

[@victoriafindlay5616]

~7:30 minutes in to actually see the bison

[@Aliceboy2k9]

Love seeing rewilding finally taking place with such big herbivores! However, is the release of only 4 bison not going to have terrible effects in years to come with there being such a small gene pool? And what plans are there for the future once the bison are more widespread and at carrying capacity, when theyre coexisting with more reintroduced ungulates, surely a top level predator needs reintroducing to keep numbers in check?

[@BamulOi]

It's likely that bison from the populations in different countries will be used to diversify the gene pool, e.g. a bison from Poland (which has been leading the żubr conservation efforts and along with Belarus has the largest wild population) might be brought in to mate with a growing English population of bison. As for population control, I think the żubr has no natural predator in the wild these days. In countries where the conservation efforts have already been, and continue to be, very successful I believe they just resort to controlled and very limited hunts carried out by humans, with permission and under a watchful eye of course so that mistakes from the past are not repeated.

[@lucy7b]

😊😊😊

[@MunterPunter]

Whilst this is important for nature and our environment, they are not really wild. They live in a fenced off enclosure.

[@kentwildlife]

Hi there. Thanks for your comment. The bison are currently free-roaming within 50 hectares of woodland, once the tunnels are in place they will have access to over 200 hectares of the forest. The fencing is a legal requirement under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act and these animals are as wild as UK legislation requires them to be. It is also worth noting that animals in huge fenced off nature reserves in many parts of the world are still considered wild - fencing is simply a form of protection for the animals. Hope this helps :)

[@MunterPunter]

@@kentwildlife I see your points, but they are still not truly wild. There's hardly any land in England that's wild. It all belongs to the oligarchs and royalty. Look what's happening with Dartmoor.

[@dustydowser9162]

I hope it's not another land grab!

[@gardeningwiththeharpers9068]

Why bison though? Surely this is just a exotic way of doing something that other animals would do just as well with out this cost? Surly a breed of domestic cattle can and would and if they can’t achieve the same effect alone then introduce goats pigs or rotate them around the wood to achieve a similar effect with less cost, money time and man hours, to achieve the same results? I like to see different animals in the countryside but surly this is just a luxury, like beavers!

[@josh._-_]

Well as you're right about cattle bison were originally here and in fact are better at this job than any cattle would be, like our English long horn they use their horns to break branches eat weeds n such the bison does the same I believe but the bison does it better with their larger size and their dust bathing creating openings in the ground for plant life and different wildlife will also benefit from bison being back to the English landscape

[@BamulOi]

Well put Josh, domesticated cattle cannot be compared in this context to a wild animal like the zubr. Although apparently the wisent as we know it today was never actually native to the British Isles, its close relative (that is sadly long extinct) the forest bison was and this is the closest that we can get to the same thing. It's an amazing achievement that hopefully will inspire others to start similar initiatives with this and other species.

[@willdouglas1617]

Additionally to what Josh said, part of the project is creating an equivalent area with cattle instead of bison. Both areas are being surveyed extensively and the data will be compared. So hopefully over the course of years, we can see unequivocally how much more effective the bison are at managing the habitats

[@marinaorgan589]

beavers aren't a luxury, they're a cheap alternative to paying people to design and maintain wetland. As for the bison, cattle do more grass grazing, there's plenty of them and little space to build up the still vulnerable European Bison (which is a very different animal to the American in how it feeds) . Plus let's not ignore the sheer hard tourism cash they're going to bring to Kent.