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>All 9,000 bison now living in Europe are descended from just 12 zoo animals, which saved the species from extinction in the early 20th century, so maximising genetic diversity is important.

Interesting. If it's a girl are the going to go with Elizabeth? ;)

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Life will always find a way

Shows the importance of the role that zoos can play in preserving species at risk of extinction!

🥲

The naturalist seems like such a genuinely great guy. Love seeing people you don’t even know making the world better.

God I hope not.

So lets do wolves then bears too...?

wait back up… there are wild bison in the UK??? that is so cool! :O

Giant European elk first.

Was there a male bison in the picture? The article only mentions one arriving in the future

Can you explain how it‘s possible that there is no problem with incest? Or is incest a thing? 9000 bisons from only 12 bisons is just mind blowing for me

Great next week, they'll be re-introducing wolves.

...jokes aside I really hope they do. Wolves have made huge benefits when re- introduced to areas in the USA.

Depends on how outbred the original 12 bisons were, but the current herd is likely to be very limited in terms of genetic diversity. The population is likely more at risk for rare recessive genetic disorders and has a population level fragility. High genetic diversity allows a species to survive tough conditions such as plague, famine, climate change as better adapted genes can permit a portion of the population to endure. Such an inbred population means a single disease or poor season could bring the species to the brink.

I wonder, if they had some DNA from old preserved specimens could you introduce it into the herd to bring up the gene diversity? Ie the ol clone and bone

Is it "wild" if it's in a 200 acre enclosure?

Bison Ranger Gibbs (the job title to get):

>“There were a couple of days when we didn’t see female 2 and that was sort of an alarm bell, because she’s normally very confident and the one up at the front. I hoped she was OK,” said Gibbs.
>
>“I went off to try and to find her and after about an hour, I could hear some rustling in the tree line. I didn’t want to get too close, so I used my binoculars, and I could see her tail swishing."
>
>“Then, lo and behold, this little face popped out from behind the female, and that was the eureka moment. It was just unbelievable to think this is the first wild born bison here in England. It was just a monumental moment.”

>...the new mother and another young female came from a park in Ireland, where the calf will have been conceived.

Probably not, but biologists do give a special name to the first shit a baby bison takes because it stinks so much: a worsel.

Most of them only rate 111 to 222 on the stinkometer but this one came out at a 555.

>The bison are currently in a five-hectare (12-acre) enclosure, as they adapt to their new lives and their health is closely monitored. They will be moved to an area of 50-hectare (124 acres) next and then, next summer, the full 200-hectare site (494 acres).

Ehm, rewilding is the goal.

TIL Bison are native to the UK. Huh.

There are lots of gene editing tools out there, so I doubt it's impossible, but the genetic diversity of the population will also improve over time due to random mutations.

Keep it in the wild not many predators.

There aren’t really any truly wild areas left in the UK, almost all of it is managed in some way.

The reason for the enclosure is more for their protection as they’re big beasts and if they wander on to a road or something then it won’t be good for anyone.

The ‘rewild’ bit comes from the work the bison are here to do, which is rewild ancient woodland.

Yeah down in Canterbury of all places

We... We used to have bison?

I know. I was just thinking it would be nice to see them released somewhere larger, like the Knepp estate.

I question the how environmentally helpful it actually is to reintroduce a species that has been gone for thousands of years. Lets use horses as an example, they went extinct in north America about 12,000 years ago about the same time as bison in the UK, they were reintroduced by the Europeans and now they are a significant environmental problem in the American South-West. I have to wonder what is the difference between introducing a species that has been gone for thousands of generations of local wild life and introducing a species that was never there.

Article is about restoring wild habitat in UK, not another species in USA.

>Populations of the UK’s most important wildlife have plummeted by an average of 60% since 1970 and Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. The project [assesses] how bison act as “ecosystem engineers” to restore wild habitat.
>
>Bison’s taste for bark kills some trees and their bulk opens up trails, letting light spill on to the forest floor, while their love of rolling around in dust baths creates more open ground for new plants, invertebrates and birds. The Wilder Blean project aims to naturally regenerate a former pine wood plantation.
>
>The process has been surprisingly speedy, said Gibbs, who has seen slow worms basking and heard more birdsong. “We had not seen dung beetles on the site but all of a sudden, they are just thriving,” he added.
>
>Vicki Breakell, conservation officer at the Wildwood Trust, said: “They’ve created tracks and pathways, which has opened up the canopy already, and they’ve been munching on the bark, which over time is going to create the standing dead wood which is so valuable for a whole host of different species.”

For “thousands” of years?!

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My point is restoring wildlands by introducing an invasive species is asking for trouble. I was using horses in the American west as an example of a species extinct in an area for 11000 years being reintroduced and the negative effect it eventually had.

You could always look up 'rewilding' and educate yourself. Or, just go up against the conservation officer at Wildwood Trust and pretend you know more.

Archbison of Canterbury

I'm guessing you're joking, but wolves are actually amazing for the environment and biodiversity, and should be reintroduced.

On a human time scale the genetic diversity doesn’t meaningfully increase with time.

Let us keep hoping that they manage to hang on long enough for it to happen, yeah?

Absolutely. Couldn’t be more happy that this type of thing is happening. But it doesn’t negate the fact that eventually the herds genetic diversity will need to be bolstered by outbreeding, which in this case is very possible.

How many bisons does one fit in a 4l lada mini ?

They're going to be introduced into increasingly larger enclosures as the herd grows I think

I don’t understand why you’re getting downvoted. You’re both talking about two different problems.

Grab-n-g0 is saying they aren’t trying to reintroduce a species but more in line with “hiring” some guys to do conversation landscaping (aka the bison).

Green machine is saying aren’t the rewilding groups worried about introducing a species that might become invasive or have dire consequences. I also live in the USA, and while some reintroductions of species have been great (red wolves in the southeast, cougars in the northeast) there have also been some that have been devastating (omg the feral pigs as an example).