Castelo Branco welcomes Portugal’s first bison herd

The first bison herd, consisting of eight animals, has been placed in Portugal, on a farm in Castelo Branco, the organization responsible for the operation announced this Friday.

According to Rewilding Portugal, the presence of animals will stimulate biodiversity and support the growth of nature-based tourism.

The same source said in a statement that this was a pioneering translocation of animals brought from nature reserves in Poland.

“This is the first ever transfer of bison to Portugal,” the document says.

As large herbivores, the animals will “reduce the risk of catastrophic fires” by reducing flammable vegetation and creating natural fire breaks while opening up forested areas, allowing “more light to come in and weeds to grow instead.” to the application.

Fire outbreaks are becoming more common in Mediterranean regions as climate change brings more extreme temperatures.

“This problem is aggravated by the fact that bushes have taken over areas where livestock have disappeared as a result of depopulation of the rural population,” the promoters justify themselves.

The European bison will share the landscape with a herd of bulls that were introduced into the Great Koa Valley in 2023 and recently moved into the same area.

“As a key species and symbol of the rewilding movement, the European bison has the potential to become a climate and biodiversity hero. This is one of the reasons why the current return of this influential herbivore to European landscapes is so important, along with conservation efforts. support population growth,” said the organizers of the initiative.

Although the European bison has not been found in the wild on the Iberian Peninsula, remains of the extinct steppe bison from which today’s bison are descended have been documented in the region.

The steppe bison became extinct about 10,000 years ago, after the last ice age, but the European bison, which coexisted with the steppe bison for tens of thousands of years in Europe, spread into Eastern Europe, to the Volga River and the Caucasus Mountains.