Allies for Wildlife: Making Bison Rewilding a Reality

With the theme of partnerships this Love Your Zoo week, BIAZA members Wildwood Trust and Fota Wildlife Park celebrate the monumental collaborative rewilding project which took the world by storm:

In the heart of Kent, a bold experiment in ecological restoration continues.

Bison rewilded in the Wilder Blean Forest, Kent, December 2022 (Donovan Wright)

This pioneering collaboration between Wildwood Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust represents the UK’s first reintroduction of European bison (Bison bonasus) into a wild landscape.

Donovan Wright (Wildwood Trust) has been with the Wilder Blean Bison Project from day one as both a conservationist and photographer.

“Once extirpated across much of Europe, the European bison is now a flagship for nature recovery, both a keystone species and a symbol of ecological hope. Although absent from Britain since the last Ice Age, their close ancestors, the Steppe bison and aurochs, once helped shape our native woodlands. Today, European bison are reawakening these lost processes” Donovan writes.

The benefits of roaming wild bison are innumerable. Through bark stripping, browsing, trampling, and wallowing, bison create dynamic habitat mosaics that support diverse flora and fauna. Their behaviour enhances landscape heterogeneity, promotes nutrient cycling, and even builds resilience against climate change.

Their presence represents a shift from land management to land healing, a nature-based solution to biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, and the challenges of a warming world.

The rewilded bison later made waves when one gave birth to a surprise female calf in summer 2022, the first of several to calves which would boost the herd over subsequent years.

Support for this incredible species has not stopped at Kent. Fota Wildlife Park in County Cork, Ireland, has been instrumental in European bison reintroduction efforts since 2007, in collaboration with the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA).

These initiatives have helped restore European bison populations in countries including Poland, Romania, Spain, the UK, and Azerbaijan.

"Fota joined the European endangered breeding programmes in 1999, when it welcomed its first European bison. Since then, calves born at the park have contributed to conservation projects across Europe.” Writes Róisín FitzGerald, Marketing and PR Manager at Fota Wildlife Park.

“Notably, in April 2008, Fota sent its first European bison to Poland’s Białowieża National Park, where their descendants now roam the ancient forest.”

Later on, in 2014, six female captive-bred European bison from zoos including Fota Wildlife Park and RZSS Highland Wildlife Park were rewilded to Vânători-Neamț Nature Park in Romania's Carpathian Mountains.

To support the Wilder Blean project in 2022 was another milestone for Fota, who contributed two female bison, born at the park, to the project.

Róisín continued: “As part of Fota Wildlife Park’s broader conservation mission, the park contributes to breeding and reintroduction programmes for endangered species, including the scimitar-horned oryx and native Irish species such as curlew, natterjack toad, and white-clawed crayfish.”

The role of European bison goes beyond ecological services. Since news of their rewilding became international news 2022 they have served as a cultural catalyst capturing public imagination and fostering deeper connections with nature recovery. As a charismatic species they provide valuable educational opportunities and strengthen public support for conservation.