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More European bison in the wild

Eriksberg Nature Reserve

2016-08-23

Now are the new edition of the pedigree book 2015 published. We can note that we have 6 083 purebred bison registered in Europe, an increase of +530 animals since last year. The wild populations are most increasing. Now we have 4 009 free living European bison in the wild.

For more than 60 years ago the first European bison could be released again into the Bialowieza forest after the nearly extinction of the species. The forest has still the biggest free-living population with over thousand animals. In the Polish part of the forest live 578 animals and in the part of Belarus 480 animals. We have now free living populations of European bison in several countries. Except the bison in Poland and Belarus, we have populations in Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia and small populations in Romania, Lithuania and Germany. The rescuing of the European bison are a success story, but it have been a hard work behind. It have taken nearly hundred years to come to this point with help of hundreds of people in several countries.
The pedigree office, the editor Dr Jan Raczynski and the editorial Secretary. mgr inz, Malgorzata Bolbot have done an extremely hard work to get all data, contact all breeders and check everything. All changes among the breeders in the captivity populations and together with this winter´s tracking of the wild populations of European bison have now been reported to the pedigree office. Malgorzata Bolbot has contacted hundreds of breeders and get reports from the free living herds in many countries. And then check all the data again, a gigantic work.
The wild populations are increasing and the trend are, said Dr Jan Raczynski, to reintroduction more animals to the wild with help of establishing local breeding centers where new populations are to be located, especially in Russia and Belarus he says.
Malgorzata Bolbot send a special thanks, in the website of Bison Friend Society, for all help in compiling the information about the job of collecting data for the pedigree book. She tanks specially the coordinators of EBCC; in Germany Reiner Glunz, Thomas Henning, Johannes Riedl and Fred Zentner, in Scandinavia Tommy Svensson, in Spain Fernando Moran, in the Chech Republic; Luber Cerva, Miroslav Jirku and Daliber. Taras Sipko from Russia and Pavel Veligurov of Belarus and Vitaly Smagol in Ukraine.
This year the pedigree book will be available to a broader public and will be available for the participants of the international European Bison Conference held in September in Poland by the European Bison Friend Society.