{"id":331247,"date":"2026-02-11T06:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/331247\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T06:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:09:11","slug":"a-century-after-vanishing-a-gentle-giant-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/331247\/","title":{"rendered":"A Century After Vanishing, a Gentle Giant Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once rewilded, a new set of challenges emerges. Introduced bison behave somewhat differently from the ones now being born in the wild. \u201cThey are relatively used to humans and, in winter, when there isn\u2019t much to graze on, often forage in apple orchards in lower altitudes,\u201d Sebastian Ursuta, who handles communications for Rewilding Romania, says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ursuta\u2019s phone is the bison hotline, available to community members who have close encounters with the animals. \u201cThe bison are gentle but can look intimidating,\u201d he says. His job is to visit bison contact areas, allay people\u2019s fears about the animals and assess the damage, if any. Rewilding Romania has also successfully piloted training mountain dogs to deter the bison from coming too close to human habitations, and now rangers are always accompanied by canines.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOnce an older guy called and said \u2018the bison are here,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018okay, did they do any damage?\u2019\u201d Ursuta recounts. \u201cHe said they didn\u2019t, \u2018but they are here, and I haven\u2019t met a bison before and I don\u2019t know what to do!\u2019\u201d Ursuta, along with rangers like Ioan Simescu, smooths things over when \u201csometimes the bison help themselves to an apple or two from private orchards, breaking a few branches here and there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The practice of hunting poses another challenge. In 2017, a wild European bison was shot<\/a> after it crossed the border from Poland into Germany, highlighting the need for more comprehensive trans-boundary measures to support bison comeback. Rewilding Romania has been fencing areas close to habitations where the bison tend to stray, but this is expensive and needs regular maintenance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The incident underscores the need for developing awareness about bison. For Ursuta and the Rewilding Romania team, this means incentivising the community to become \u201cbison smart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SebastianSebastian Ursuta examines a bison hoofprint near an orchard. Credit: Geetanjali Krishna<\/p>\n

\u201cBy linking bison to local pride, and also local businesses and jobs, we hope to get local people to welcome them into the community,\u201d says Rewilding Romania\u2019s Paula Cristina Bora, who organizes livelihood training, capacity building and outreach programs that help people to see bison as an opportunity instead of threat. Bora recently worked with a local producer to develop an apple spritzer, made with \u201cco-existence apples\u201d bought at prices higher than the market rate from orchards frequented by bison, which is already working its way into cocktails in taverns in Timisoara, the nearest town.<\/p>\n

Simescu, a local resident who now works as a guide and ranger with Rewilding Romania, says that reintroducing the bison has created several business opportunities for locals. New homestays and wilderness camps have opened, and some have already begun offering bison-spotting hiking holidays.<\/p>\n

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In the autumn of 2023, a herd of reintroduced wild bison reportedly<\/a> migrated naturally from the \u021aarcu Mountains to the Domogled-Cerna Valley National Park. Ursuta estimates the local bison population at over 250, of which they have rewilded 105. \u201cWay over half of them have now been born in the wild, and we also have a second generation of wild bison,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re carefully selecting new bison for reintroduction, to increase the population\u2019s genetic diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrary to traditional approaches, which feared that rewilding grazing species could further degrade grasslands and meadows, a 2024 study<\/a> used a model developed by sci\u00adent\u00adists at the Yale School of the Envir\u00adon\u00adment and found the opposite. The research has not been peer reviewed but estimates that the nearly 50 square kilometers of grass\u00adlands within the wider \u021aarcu moun\u00adtains where the European bison herds now live are capturing roughly 10 times as much carbon as they were before the species was reintroduced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once rewilded, a new set of challenges emerges. Introduced bison behave somewhat differently from the ones now being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[24250,3616,18,1015,19,17,40449,133,461],"class_list":["post-331247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bison","tag-conservation","tag-eire","tag-europe","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rewilding","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116050510778105345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}