Bison girl is back home

After a few attempts, the girl wisent that escaped on Novem­ber 18th, 2015 was suc­cess­ful­ly anes­thetized and brought back to her fel­lows in the enclo­sure near Criewen. There are now, in addi­tion to an old and a young bison bull, four female ani­mals (two old­er and two young), all in all a very nice breed­ing group for the endan­gered wild cat­tle species.

At the time, the lady bison had released her­self into the wild quite inde­pen­dent­ly and led a free but large­ly secret life for many weeks. She nev­er sought con­tact with humans or oth­er cat­tle and for a long time lived quite hid­den in the nation­al park. Peo­ple were nev­er endan­gered or threat­ened, not even car traf­fic, as was ini­tial­ly feared.

The pop­u­la­tion react­ed relaxed and calm and com­plete­ly unex­cit­ed to the new room­mate. Many res­i­dents fol­lowed our request for help and repeat­ed­ly passed on visu­al obser­va­tions. Fear or anger was nev­er expressed towards us. It seems as if the young bison was accept­ed as a room­mate. After all, bisons have been at home much longer in the Low­er Oder Val­ley than humans. Nev­er­the­less, the wisent lady was caught and brought back to her con­specifics, not least because of the nec­es­sary offspring.

At this point we would like to thank every­one who sup­port­ed us in this cam­paign and showed under­stand­ing for wild bison. Humans and wild ani­mals can live togeth­er in har­mo­ny in the Low­er Oder Valley.

The board of directors