Re-introduction of wisents in Germany

Yesterday was a great day for wildlife in Germany. By opening a gate 8 wisents were given the possibility to leave their temporaly enclosure and roam free in at least 30 squir kilometers of fields and woodland !
The release was followed by many reporters but the animals behaved shy and were hardly to see.
With this release the wisent is the largest land-mammal living free in Germany !

 

That sounds like great news. When was the last time that there were wild wisent in Germany?

 

Great news! I'm going to go ahead and assume that these are pure Wisent and not some of those half-bison, half-cattle ones, right?

~Thylo

 

You assume rigth, they are real wisents.

 

Re-introduction of Wisent...

Wish we had free-ranging European Bison here in the UK. The cattle in the New Forest could be replaced by Bison, which could eventually produce a meat crop [or even a trophy hunting resource]. Replacing the New Forest Ponies would be more difficult, as they are a local breed with a place in local culture. The cattle there are just cross-bred beef cattle, and would be no loss. Bison would be a tremendous asset.

 

heres a couple of articles about this interesting release
German Prince Plans To Put Bison Back In The Wild | WKAR
Bison Will Roam Forests in Germany Again - Prince to free small herd of wisents

 

And another article about the release :
Wildlife Extra News - European bison released into the wild in Germany

 

European bison released into the wild in Germany

"European bison roaming in Germany for the first time for 400 years"

Wildlife Extra News - European bison released into the wild in Germany

Thought that this was an interesting piece of news especially when I just started looking into the animal a little while ago. Hope they thrive!

 

I wonder where I've read this before- http://www.zoochat.com/65/re-introduction-wisents-germany-316354/



~Thylo

 

Gah, I knew I read it somewhere. Sorry!

 

It happens. Welcome to ZooChat!

~Thylo

 

I always think it's good when animals are reintroduced into their former ranges. Now if only more wolves and grizzlies could be restored out west.

 

This is very great news, i am excited about this news !!!, It would be nice if they could also re-introduce them into places like the Caucasus mountains and the Iberian peninsula because the range of the European bison (Bison bonasus) also spanned as far as those places, still this is even a big step in wisent conservation because there was a time when they were confined to the bialoweza forest in poland, there conservation status is vulnerable and I hope to see there numbers go as high as the population of American bison today, it is just horrendous how careless people were when they hunted American bison (Bison bison) back in the day and caused them to almost go extinct, I hope this dosnt sound like a dumb question but were Wisent populations heavily destroyed to the extent that American bison were ?

 

I would love to see bison restored to other parts of North America. They are killed when they go into Montana, which is a shame. To get back to the wisents, I think they had been extinct in the wild previously. I think they have also been restored to the Iberian Peninsula.

 

If I'm not mistaken, about half the current wild population of Wisents are B. b. bonasusXB. b. caucasicus crosses. Meanwhile, in North America, a large portion of the wild American Bison population are B. bisonXB. p. taurus hybrids.

~Thylo

 

Your right ThylacineAlive, in a large part of the European wisent population some B. b. caucasicus-blood is streaming through their vains. B. b. caucasicus as a subspecies on it´s own is extinct and the hybrids is the best we have. Even so, the differences were not that large and better a look-a-like Wisent as no Wisent at all ( personal opinion ).

 

Well technically it isn't a look-a-like since they're all subspecies.

I want to make a correction to what I said about the American Bison, they're not full bisonXcow hybrids but they do have a small portion of cattle genes in them. I don't know about the Wisent, but zoos today, especially the Bronx Zoo, have been trying to breed only pure American Bison and trying to weed out the cattle genes.

~Thylo

 

Of course Groves and Grubb raise both subspecies of Wisent to full species level...

 

Supposedly there are only four herds in North America that have pure bison genes; the Yellowstone National Park herd, the Henry Mountains herd in Utah, the Wind Cave National Park herd in South Dakota,and the herd in Elk Island National Park in Alberta.

 

Is that just the Plains Bison or does that include the Wood Bison? I think Wood Bison are more pure.

~Thylo