Hunted by medieval barons for their trophy horns, tasty meat and winter-proof hides, the European Bison was wiped out from Bulgarian habitats hundreds of years ago. The good news is that after years of trying, the magnificent animals are back, roaming wild in the Rhodope Mountains. By Jeremy Torr.

Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria. October 2019. If you are suffering from anxiety about the state of global habitats, depressed by news of rainforest destruction and stories of massive natural disasters, here’s something to cheer you up. For the first time since the Middle Ages, European bison are now roaming free in the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria.

“This is a momentous occasion,” says Hristo Hristov, spokesperson at the Rewilding Europe (RE) Rhodopes team. “The animals are now reoccupying their former ecological niche, finding water and food, learning to protect themselves against wolves and jackals, and exploring the challenging terrain.”

The herd of seven animals (two males and five females) was released from their enclosure this summer and is now living free in the Studen Kladenets Hunting Reserve – but being monitored on a daily basis to make sure they thrive. Better still, one of the wild females has already given birth – this will be the first wild bison born south of the River Danube since medieval times. The female calf and mother are both doing well, says Hristov. “The calf was born in one of the wildest parts of the reserve and … is a symbol of hope for a wilder and more biodiverse Rhodope Mountains. That’s why we have called her Nadezhda, which means ‘hope’ in Bulgarian.”

The successful release of the animals – which were bred in captivity in Germany – is just part of an ambitious plan to bring back many endangered and vanished species to the wilder parts of Europe.

RE is hoping that over the next five years a more supportive legal framework will be put in place to allow even more introductions. It is pushing for wild horses, bison and aurochs to be listed as wild natives, which will make them protected species, and also for wildlife comeback areas which will with luck lead to non-fed wildlife populations. The group says that this will, eventually, lead to the wider regrouping of endangered species like the souslik (European ground squirrel), the marbled polecat and the Imperial eagle. Already the return of wolves as a healthy population has helped manage the densities and distribution of herbivores that creates better opportunities for the vulture populations (black, griffon and Egyptian) that once scavenged the area.

“This approach will help to boost local biodiversity and underpin the development of nature-based tourism too,” says Hristov. “The European bison will bring a range of benefits to wild nature as well to (visitors).”

As they roam free, the bison will live alongside deer, wolves, the vultures and many other rare and endangered species. As peak species, they will have a positive impact on local environments, helping to create a biodiversity-rich mosaic landscape through their grazing and browsing, as well as enhancing local food chains.

The European bison once existed wild across much of Europe in large numbers, but hunting and habitat loss saw it driven to extinction as a free roaming species by the beginning of the twentieth century. Various reintroduction programmes are producing newly-expanding wild populations in Poland and Belarus, as well as the new animals now in Bulgaria. This has meant numbers of the animals in the wild currently total around 4000; a remarkable comeback.

“We have to get these large herbivores back. If we take care of them they will restore the open spaces and there will be a home for the butterflies, amphibians and ground squirrels, and the herbivores themselves will become food for wolves and vultures,” says Hristov.

“This way, balance will be restored.”