It's part of a rewilding effort. They'll be moving exmoor ponies, longhorn cattle, and iron age pigs to this particular woodland as well to recreate the kind of situation that would have existed before the advent of intensive agriculture.
I don't believe there's any evidence of Bison being native to the UK, although there were certainly Aurochs (wild cattle, hence the longhorn cattle), so this isn't a reintroduction as such; nonetheless, it's pretty cool.
Good to see that Eurasian bison are making a comeback. They were down to a single herd in a Polish zoo by the end of WW2. Now there's a halfway stable population in the wild in the old growth Bialowica woods, the first herd has been reintroduced to the Red Hair Mountains in Germany and soon they will frolick around the British countryside and trample terfs and aristocratic nonces under their powerful hooves :Care-Comrade:
iron age pigs
🚨🚨🚨🚨
Holy shit that seems like a bad idea. They're talking about boars.
Edit- downgraded the boar alarm.
Well they're native and it's going to be carefully managed, so it's not going to turn into a "30-50 feral hogs" situation.
Edit: just looked up the Iron Age Pig, and it's actually the name of a specific hybrid between a Wild Boar and a Tamworth. We do actually have a population of Boar in the Forest of Dean that people keep on complaining about because they turn over their lawns lol
So, when are they going to introduce any predators to this ecosystem? Or are they expecting badgers to step up to the task?
They probably won't. The pigs and cows are going to be managed just like regular pigs and cows, and the bison are probably not going to be there in large enough numbers to justify hunting, so they'll probably just be treated like farm animals too, albeit ones that are left to their own devices.
More me mocking UK conservationists. Eagle owls are considered too much of a threat for the UK.
At least it seems that farmers got that red kites eat rodents and pests, not their livestock, through their thick skulls at long last.
Ah, fair enough.
We'd probably have an easier time getting birds of prey into the country if the aristocracy stopped gamekeeping for shooting though >:(
