Sure, I'll take your word for it. Forgive me my ignorance on UK land use geography, I was merely making general statements regarding rewilding. Depends a bit on which form of rewilding you talk about. Pleistocene rewilding is indeed very ambitious (and in my opinion overly idealistic too - though I would like the debate on it to continue). Releasing (managed) herbivores for more natural grazing regimes is already a much more benign version and employed throughout Europe, even in densely populated countries like the Netherlands. Rewilding has certainly attracted its fair share of highly passionate, ambitious and idealistic proponents!
Wikipedia Kent is a county in South East England Kent was among the first British territories conquered and settled by Anglo-Saxons. Because of its relative abundance of fruit-growing and hop gardens, Kent is known as 'The Garden of England'. edit - we have a project in Cambridgeshire https://rewildingeurope.com/news/eu...omes-visionary-uk-based-rewilding-initiative/ again 're-wilding' using domestic animals, and this time taking up a huge area of the most productive grade 1 lowland agricultural land in the country in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Again we'll have to import the food which could have been (and IS currently) grown there...
Britain did have Bison schoetensacki during the Pleistocene, a sister species to the European Wisent, which was apparently very similar in ecology and morphology. ,
I don't see a problem here. I understand this is a copy of enclosures which exist in suburban forests and meadows in Germany, Netherlands and Poland. They are small enclosed paddocks / show enclosures / half zoos-half reserves / grazing reserves. They vary from a big pasture or a single zoo-like enclosure to a small reserve. In the small ones you can often feed the bison through the fence. The larger ones usually keep the animals more wild and often have walking and biking trails crossing them. It depends entirely how intensive management is planned. Cost is another reason why British conservation should change to less intensive management and allowing natural processes. You probably mean Oostvaardersplassen, but there are many smaller similar places in the Netherlands. I think none of them involves all cows, horses, wisents together, but there is no particular reason for this. Oostvaardersplassen is recently torn between being natural (letting animals starve after they breed to much) and being nice to animals (feeding them in winter and killing a surplus). But despite the people arguing vigorously what their vision of Utopia means, it is still a wonderful reserve.
In fact in two out of three (or four if you count Natuurpark Lelystad) places that have "wild" wisents in the Netherlands they live together with both horses and cattle. At the Kraansvlak they share the entire reserve with konik horses and highland cattle. In the Maashorst they live together with herds of tauros cattle and exmoor ponies. In the Veluwe (Kootwijk) they live alongside red, fallow and roe deer and wild boar (representing probably the most intact forest megafauna assemblage in the Netherlands)
I don't believe it is pointless speculating. It is always interesting to hear people's views on it.. whether it happens in the near future of in a decade.
The concept of Pleistocene rewilding is one that at least on a theoretical level I think exciting and revolutionary. When I'm in Europe I truly enjoy going to the Dordogne region of France and Northern Spain to see both the Magdalenian / prehistoric cave paintings of animals and (in the case of Spain) some of the predators that have disappeared from much of the rest of Europe such as the wolf , wildcat, and the brown bear. Part of the joy in seeing this wildlife and these historical sites is precisely in thinking about what the natural landscape and primeavel human hunter-gatherer experience of this world was like. But on a practical / pragmatic level I'm a lot more cynical about the feasibility of rewilding initiatives and particularly when it comes to the likelihood of this working out in the British isles which has vastly different conditions in comparison with the continent. I think that there are some species which could make good candidates for reintroduction programes such as the European wildcat , pine marten and perhaps even the lynx but I'm very cynical about the possibility of bringing back the wolf or bear.
Yes, I think this was the one that I heard about regarding both initial praise for its vision (think I saw this in a TED talk) and then later on controversy about the starvation through overpopulation of the animals and culling. I agree , it is an interesting experiment and even despite all the polemics.
@Mr. Zootycoon Thanks for the correction. I hope larger grazing reserves will bring wild species like European bison in future. The general concept is something like a half of nature, designed for places where people lost cultural memory of wildlife and laws do not foresee a realistic possibility to reintroduce wildlife.
I hope so too but in practice it doesn't always work out that well though and can quite easily backfire or be derailed even if the planning is meticulous. If I remember correctly in Northern Spain the attempt to bring back wisent to the regional lost cultural memory / collective unconcious (they appear in the most striking cave paintings of the Cantabrian region like the famous Altamira) sadly ended up with many of these animals being killed.
This thread made me realise just how limited the biodiversity of modern day Britain really is. Also is there a difference between reintroducing a species and rewilding a species?
In my opinion "reintroduction" is neutral older term describing re-establishment of a species where it formally lived by humans. "Rewilding" is new cool version of the same. However, some people (especially in the UK and Benelux) consider keeping of animals in large fenced areas to be rewilding too. Which is puzzling to me because these are clear captives, just with a nicer pen? To use the word rewilding when you speak about such places is insincere.
Certainly in British English 'rewilding' is something you do to a place, rather than a species. So, in this case, they are (hoping) to reintroduce bison as part of rewilding Kent. Rewilding is not just reintroductions, it could cover (for example) changes in verge management just as well as reintroductions.
Release of a small herd of endangered animals in Kent is planned for spring 2022. Wild bison are to return to the UK for the first time in 6,000 years, with the release of a small herd in Kent planned for spring 2022. The £1m project to reintroduce the animals will help secure the future of an endangered species. But they will also naturally regenerate a former pine wood plantation by killing off trees. This creates a healthy mix of woodland, scrub and glades, boosting insect, bird and plant life. Wild bison to return to UK for first time in 6,000 years
Another article on the subject: Wild Bison Are Heading Back to the English Woods for the First Time in 6,000 Years
At last seeing some sense. Species like beaver, wild cat and a whole bunch else are (not just were) part of the English/Welsh/Scottish landscape and fauna and there is no reason why these could not recover or be reintroduced to current natural areas in Britain.
The problem with wildcats of course is interbreeding with feral domestic cats. This is a huge problem in Europe (Scotland and elsewhere) and I really feel the respective governments need to crack down hard. My suggestion is to mandate that domestic cats be kept indoors only (with any found outside killed immediately) and breeding require a license.
