The bison return (05.06.2012)

After the rein­tro­duc­tion of the back­bred aurochs and the back­bred west­ern wild horse in the Low­er Oder Val­ley, the last, not yet erad­i­cat­ed Euro­pean wild cat­tle, name­ly the Euro­pean bison ( Bison bona­sus ) back to the Low­er Oder Val­ley Nation­al Park. While the aurochs and the west­ern wild horse were exter­mi­nat­ed by humans in his­tor­i­cal times and are now being grad­u­al­ly recon­struct­ed from their orig­i­nal forms, a few wild bison remained alive and became ances­tral forms of the bison, which is wide­spread again today. These rus­tic wild cat­tle roamed through the Low­er Oder Val­ley when there were no peo­ple, no state of Bran­den­burg and no nation­al park. They have been at home here since time immemo­r­i­al and belong here. Now you are final­ly com­ing back, for secu­ri­ty rea­sons, of course, secured by a stur­dy fence.

A pre­vi­ous­ly unpro­duc­tive agri­cul­tur­al steppe next to the Criewen­er park­ing lot, pre­vi­ous­ly an invest­ment ruin, was used as a loca­tion for the bison, sur­round­ed by the near-nat­ur­al forests of the only flood­plain nation­al park in Ger­many. Although the bison enclo­sure is easy to reach for the vis­i­tors, it is not a dis­play enclo­sure, but a project of species con­ser­va­tion and nature pro­tec­tion, but at the same time also an addi­tion­al eco­nom­ic pil­lar for the Berk­holz­er Agrargenossen­schaft, which has a lot of expe­ri­ence in cat­tle farm­ing and wants to diver­si­fy their farm. The Nation­al Park Foun­da­tion Unteres Oder­tal sup­ports this fruit­ful con­nec­tion between nature con­ser­va­tion and agri­cul­ture to the best of its abil­i­ty, but the respon­si­bil­i­ty for keep­ing bison rests with the expe­ri­enced cat­tle breed­ers from Berkholz.

The four young bisons (2 males, 2 females) come from the Tier­park and the Berlin Zoo. Col­lec­tive­ly, these zoos with the most species in the world have been part­ners of the Nation­al Park Foun­da­tion for 17 years, which has always paid off, in the excur­sion pro­gram and in bison breed­ing. The com­bi­na­tion of zoo­log­i­cal gar­dens and nation­al parks is sen­si­ble and forward-looking.

The four bisons will have a lot of space. A total of 13 hectares of mead­ows are avail­able to them, more than they need. The green areas will quick­ly turn into wild pas­tures and leave room for the young.

The per­ma­nent fence was devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Siel­manns Natur­land­schaften in Döber­itzer Hei­de, the sec­ond part­ner of the Nation­al Park Foun­da­tion for the bison project. Although the fence keeps the bison from vis­it­ing the neigh­bor­ing vil­lage of Criewen, it does not cut up the land­scape. Sev­er­al pas­sages allow all oth­er wild ani­mals in the for­est and field to enter and exit unhin­dered. The bison wil­low inte­grates itself organ­i­cal­ly into the sur­round­ing nation­al park forests. The gate is only a bar­ri­er for the bison them­selves. In addi­tion, numer­ous trees were plant­ed to give shade to the bison, which lived in the for­est and in the open countryside.

Dr. Ans­gar Vössing
board of directors