A group of UW-Madison researchers recently published a study of European Bison, finding that the eastern Carpathian Mountains could support future herds of the endangered species.
European Bison barely escaped extinction in the early 20th century and now only live in small isolated herds in Central and Eastern Europe. The species' survival depends on identifying suitable habitat for establishing reintroduced bison herds.
The team from UW-Madison included Botany Professor Don Waller of the College of Letters & Science and Tobias Kuemmerle, the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and Professor Volker Radeloff— both of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
They found several large, suitable, but currently unoccupied habitat patches exist for future bison herds, particularly in the eastern Carpathians.
The team gathered information about where the bison are succeeding today and overlaid these characteristics with information about what the habitat is like throughout these areas.
Establishing the first European Bison population would be a milestone in efforts to conserve this species in the wild and demonstrate a significant and hopeful step towards conserving large grazers and their ecological roles in human-dominated landscapes across the globe.
For more information:
Will Bison Roam Europe's Mountains? via Discovery News