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Bison and dinosaurs

Bison among dinosaurs

2016-11-26

The 14th annual scientific bison conference was held this year in the Dinosaur Park in Baltow, on 8 -9th September 2016, in Poland. The Conference attracted over 140 participants from 11 countries and are organized every year by the Polish Association Bison Friend Society in Poland.

The annual scientific bison conference presented many interesting reports and news about conservation work, research and from projects among breeders through out Europe. This year the focus was on reintroduction projects, their problems and success stories. For me it was very interesting to hear the reports of reintroduction projects from Belarus, Poland, Russia and Romania.
It is always fun to meet colleagues and friends and , between the lectures, discuss current issues.

This year´s award were given to Malgorzata Bolbot from the pedigree office in Poland and to Thomas Henning from Springe in Germany. Also the founder of Dinosaur Park gets an award for their work in the Dinosaur Park with their wisents.

At the end of the first session of the Conference summarized professor Wanda Olech and professor Kajetan Peranowski, from European Bison Friend Society, how the population of the European bison have developed between the years 2000 and 2015.
After this winter´s investigation, we are pleased to note that there are a total of 6000 European bison in the world. 4000 of them are wild animals, living in 39 locations around the Europe, as in Belarus, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.
"The European Bison Action Plan" by the IUCN Species Survival Commission and its Bison Specialist Group, tell us what the direction of the rescue work will be. The idea is that the both breeding lines shall be held separately but in the same time be developed.
The two breeding lines have developed slightly different. In captivity we found most animals from the Lowland/Caucasian line (the rest of the mountain bison). In the wild populations the lowland line have been most successful. This because of two countries work with their reintroduction programs in many years and it is Belarus and Poland.
In Belarus they have doubled the bison population in ten years. They work with developing an "mega" population inside their own country. In Poland they have free living populations in the north east, in the west and in the southeast. But they also work to establish a "mega" population together with other countries near their borders in north and in southeast.

I will follow the work of the on going reintroduction projects if possible but it should also be very interesting to see if it is possible to start new ones and hopefully even in more countries in the future.