Today, the official start of the third bison reintroduction project in the Netherlands was attended by Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, on behalf of Rewilding Europe. Together with pupils from local schools, Princess Laurentien officially opened the project in the Veluwe area by unveiling a bison board on which the children had put personal messages for the bison encouraging them to thrive well.

This Saturday, after 3000 km of travelling, ten more European bison originating from Belgian and German zoos and wildlife centres arrived at the Țarcu Mountains in the southern part of Romania. This group joined the herds Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania released here in 2014 and 2015, making one more step towards creating a viable wild bison population to roam freely in this area after 200 years of absence.

This year a new project started in the Southern Carpathians called “Wilderness Innovation Lab”, co-financed by a grant from the Swiss Contribution to the enlarged EU. The aim of the project is to help tell the story of bison reintroductions in real time through multimedia installations in the Southern Carpathians Visitor Centre. The centre is located in Armeniş, Caras-Severin County in Romania where Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania are leading a bison reintroduction project, on a 59,000 hectare protected area.

This Monday, the Netherlands witnessed the start of a new bison grazing project. The first four animals were released in the Maashorst nature reserve in the south-eastern part of the country (Province of Noord-Brabant) where ultimately a starting herd of of 11 animals will roam a landscape of at least 1,500 hectares of forests, grasslands, shrubs and sand dunes. The animals are all part of the European Wildlife Bank.

During the bison monitoring conducted by the bison rangers in the Southern Carpathians last week, four of the 30 bison in Armeniș were found dead. The weakest bison in the herd were outcast by the rest of the group and as a result they became more vulnerable to predators. At least two of them were attacked by a pack of stray dogs that formed in the area.

Dave and Anna, two environmentalists from the United Kingdom, started their “Biking for Rewilding” tour in April 2015 after leaving their office jobs and taking off on an adventure with a purpose. The 4,000 km cycling tour led them through seven European countries, where they visited seven rewilding areas. The final two destinations were Wisent Welt and the Palatinate Forest Biosphere Reserve in Germany, members of the European Rewilding Network (ERN).

Dave and Anna, two environmentalists from the United Kingdom, started their “biking for rewilding” tour in April 2015 after leaving their office jobs and taking off on an adventure with a purpose. In this fourth blog you can read about their visit to the European bison project in the Kraansvlak area along the Dutch coast. This project is one of the first members of the European Rewilding Network (ERN). It was here, where Dave and Anna met the spectacular European bison in nature for the first time in their life.

The European Commission has approved the LIFE proposal “Urgent actions for the recovery of European Bison populations in Romania”, developed by Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania to support the reintroduction of the European bison into the Tarçu Mountains Natura 2000 site in the Southern Carpathians rewilding landscape. The funding will be used to build a viable population of European bison in this area, by releasing in total 100 animals in the coming five years.

Ten days ago, one of the females from the founder herd of the European bison roaming the Tarcu Mountains for over a year now, gave birth to a healthy calf. The now 7-year-old female bison arrived in the Southern Carpathians rewilding area in Romania in May 2014 as part of the reintroduction and rewilding initiative led by Rewilding Europe and WWF-Romania.

When I heard that Rhodope Mountains have become the seventh Rewilding Europe’s area, the very first thought that crossed my mind was “Rhodopes cannot go any wilder”. I have always considered Rhodope Mountains as wildlife heaven due to the relatively small, even negligible human disturbance. Few months later as a Rewilding Europe volunteer, I set out on a journey to find out what can make the Rhodopes wilder than the wild place I last visited before.