Are Bison Native to the UK? - How to Rewild скачать в хорошем качестве

Are Bison Native to the UK? - How to Rewild

Are European Bison native to the UK? It's not as black and white as you might expect. Along the #rewilding path to finding an answer, we might get slightly delayed by an amazing natural spectacle... Here's the meat and #bison bones of the script... "Nightjars are a native species, but European Bison are more like a black hole for classification. But what is a native species? It's something that arrived on our island naturally since the last ice age or was already around at that time. But the thing about using our archaeological record to define a native species, is that, the record is a bit like a jigsaw where someone’s lost half the pieces. We don’t have fossils or evidence for every animal. And here’s where Nightjars and European Bison come in. Neither of them has an archaeological record in the UK. But Nightjars are absolutely accepted as a native species - there’s no question of that. Whereas European Bison, also called ‘Wisent’, are typically described as non-native. This non-native classification of Wisent may be wrong. Just like Nightjar, it may well be that European Bison bones haven’t been found in Britain simply due to their scarcity or bad luck. It could be that, next Thursday, they turn up in a cave somewhere. Scientists believe that the Wisent species emerged when ancient Auroch cattle interbred with Steppe Bison. But Steppe Bison fossils have been found in Doggerland - the land bridge between Britain and Europe, and Auroch bones were also found at sites across the UK. According to experts, many of these Auroch bones may even be European Bison bones - it’s just too hard to tell them apart. The land bridge, #Doggerland, emerged from the English Channel long after Wisents first materialised on the continent, connecting Britain to France. Given that cave paintings and bones of Wisents were found in France around the time that this land bridge emerged, it seems likely that this species could have travelled across the land bridge at least a few times during its multi-millenia-long existence. Even a few random crossings could have established a population of Wisents in the UK. There’s a danger to conclusively stating that ‘European Bison are non-native’, as if we actually have a genuine understanding of that fact. The public tends to be more accepting of native species in conservation projects - for good reason. This stigma can hold back Bison reintroduction programmes like Wilder Blean. It makes these projects feel more like Jurassic Park than a conservation programme, when their aims are actually to restore natural processes. It’s important though, to communicate the evidence to the public. We shouldn’t underestimate their appetite to learn about the species that we’re reintroducing." For Bison sources, see the guide on howtorewild.co.uk: https://tinyurl.com/2p99xb8e White Stork evidence: https://t.co/T8p0OQBRFf Thanks to Kent Wildlife Trust for the Bison video. #ecology #conservation #biodiversity #sciencecommunication