The Missing Link
Georg Messerer of Rewilding Europe’s Southern Carpathians team is based in the small Romanian town of Armenis. He believes wilder experiences can give everyone an appreciation of life.
Georg Messerer of Rewilding Europe’s Southern Carpathians team is based in the small Romanian town of Armenis. He believes wilder experiences can give everyone an appreciation of life.
Last Friday, the LIFE project “Urgent actions for the recovery of European Bison populations in Romania” (LIFE Bison) held its opening ceremony at the “Grigore Antipa” Natural History Museum in Bucharest, Romania. The project works to build a viable population of the European bison in the Tarçu Mountains Natura 2000 site in the Southern Carpathians. The event also marked the opening of the exhibition “The largest land mammal in Europe returns to the Southern Carpathian wilderness”, hosted by the Museum and open to public until end of November.
In September, Rewilding Europe released its first promotional film about creating a wilder Europe. Canon France sponsored this film produced by Emmanuel Rondeau, a French cinematographer and film producer from White Fox Pictures. Emmanuel used the new CANON EOS-1D X Mark II camera to show its various features and the innovative filming technology. The promotional film has been seen by many people all across the world, and was received very well. Emmanuel also produced a short film that takes you behind the scene where Emmanuel gives his feedback on Canon’s new flagship DSLR.
Over the last four months, I have been doing my internship in the Southern Carpathians rewilding area in Romania. This internship was part of my Master study of Biology at the Wageningen University in The Netherlands. One of my professors connected me with Rewilding Europe where he suggested to me to check out their rewilding project in the Southern Carpathians. After being in touch with the Romanian rewilding team, it became clear that they could really use an intern student this summer, so I went for it!
The Bison Visitor Centre in Armeniș, Țarcu Mountains, Romania, is now presenting scientific data about the bison in a playful and immersive way. It has the biggest holographic projection in Europe with two more installations that were built at the crossroads between art and technology. The data feed, animating the installations, is being continuously collected from the field by trainees from Romania and abroad who study different relevant subjects related to natural sciences. They live and work in the nearby village of Feneș, at the Research Station which was inaugurated this August.
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.
Last week, Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania took the first steps towards establishing a bison breeding centre in Romanian Hunedoara Zoo. In the framework of the LIFE Bison project, translocation of two bison marked the start of a new important stage in bringing back this iconic species. Newborn calves will be released from the breeding centre into the wild across the Carpathian Mountains.
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.
A major gathering of nature conservation organisations took place this week in Haskovo, Bulgaria. Members from Rewilding Europe, Rewilding Rhodopes, Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds/Birdlife Bulgaria, WWF Romania, WWF Greece, Vulture Conservation Foundation and Hellenic Ornithological Society/BirdLife Greece gathered for the kick-off meetings and training sessions of two LIFE funded projects that officially started on 1 January 2016.
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.