A rewilding project in Kent thinks that introducing bison to the UK can supercharge biodiversity. But how wild can introduced animals ever be?
The Wilder Blean project, like many of its ilk, is inspired largely by the work of Dutch ecologist Frans Vera. In his influential book, published in 2000, Vera questions the prevailing wisdom that vegetation in the lowlands of central and western Europe used to be dominated by closed forest. As a result of this assumption, he writes, farming has been given a lot of credit for increasing biodiversity, as grazing livestock creates different types of vegetation.
To make his argument , Vera draws on evidence including the effects of wildebeests grazing in the Serengeti and prehistoric pollen samples, and concludes that conservationists today need to update their frame of reference. He calls for large areas to be left free from farming and forestry, and for the reintroduction of once-wild mammals. “Cattle, horses, bison, red deer, elk, roe deer, and wild boar will have to be able to operate as wild animals once again,” he writes.
Not all herbivores are made equal when it comes to ecosystem-engineering. Bison occupy an intermediate position with regard to feeding habits; they are both grazers, eating grass, and browsers, tackling woody vegetation such as tree branches. And they eat a lot. “Debarking a tree or a shrub over a year or a few years has much more impact than taking some leaves off every now and then,” says Kemp.
While Kunzmann gathers vegetation data on the ground, Robbie Still takes a macro view. As Kent Wildlife Trust’s GIS and remote sensing officer, he is in charge of the tech at the project—a sort of conservational Q. The team plans to get aerial images of the entire site at a resolution of 20 centimeters by sending up a DJI Matrice drone and methodically flying it above the tree line. “We’re not just on the remote control zooming around; it goes up and follows a very preplanned route,” Still says.
Still’s team conducted their first drone survey in the spring of 2022, when the trees were in leaf. They’ll repeat the survey a year later to see what’s changed. “Monitoring is incredibly important in ecology, but it’s often overlooked,” Still says. “Not because of any one oversight, just because of time.”
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