“Projects across Europe have already shown how bison can thrive. In the 1920s, there were just 54 European bison, all in captive areas, after intense hunting over millennia, but thanks to rewilding efforts there are now around 10,000″ bison in Europe, “mostly in Russia and Belarus, where there is more space for bison to roam.”
But bison are being introduced even to much more densely-populated regions, like southeast England:
In July 2022, three female European bison from Ireland and Scotland were released into this countryside in Kent, in southeast England, to help restore a 50-hectare zone in the nature reserve, parts of which are a thousand years old. In December 2022, a male bison from Germany, delayed due to Brexit bureaucracy, joined them.
These large herbivores were introduced in an effort to boost the local ecosystem, in turn supporting biodiversity and making it more resilient to climate change. Their natural behaviors include debarking trees and dustbathing (i.e. rolling around on the ground), which create and maintain diverse habitats for all kinds of fauna and flora.
“Bison do many jobs, they cut down trees and churn up the ground,” adds Juan, who, along with her team of three rangers, monitors the herd daily. This includes, at least in the preliminary stages, providing the bison with supplementary feeding due to the lack of grass in the woodlands — meaning they could otherwise be at risk of copper deficiency.
…Although European bison were never native to the U.K., they are the closest living relatives to the steppe bison and other wild grazing animals that once were, and therefore are seen as the best species for recreating those behaviors. Separately, Iron Age pigs, Exmoor ponies and longhorn cattle have been released in the area to aid the restoration.
Scientists are using artificial intelligence to save whales.
The snow leopard population has doubled in Kazakhstan. Mountain gorillas are making a comeback in the African country of Rwanda.
Bengal tigers are making a comeback in Bangladesh, as are Asian antelopes and olive ridley turtles, even though Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely-populated nations, with nearly as many people per square mile as cities like Atlanta. (Bangladesh has more than 170 million people living in an area the size of Arkansas).
Crocodiles are making a comeback in Cambodia and northern Australia. A giant fish believed to be extinct was found last year in the Mekong River.
The critically-endangered Siberian crane is growing more numerous.
Wild horses recently returned to Kazakhstan after being absent for two hundred years.
