BY ALEXIA JAMES
There are moments when the world of conservation seems to have lost all grip on common sense. And then there is the Kent Wildlife Trust’s bison project – a £1,450,000 lesson in stating the bleeding obvious.
Let us be clear from the outset. The Trust, armed with a small fortune from the Post Code Lottery, has spent the best part of one and a half million pounds to demonstrate that if you place large, non-native herbivores inside a fenced-off section of woodland, they will – brace yourselves – change the way the wood looks.
Any adult of average intelligence, armed with nothing more than a cup of tea and a working pair of eyes, could have predicted that outcome. One might reasonably ask why the money was not spent on something genuinely useful, such as hedgerow restoration, farm drainage, or even a decent new roof for the village hall.
The truth is that the same effect could have been achieved with a handful of native cattle or a few sturdy ponies. But no. Vanity projects must have their exotic stars. And so we have European forest bison, a creature that has never naturally existed in the British Isles. They did not reach Doggerland in time. They are as authentically British as hyenas or lions – which is to say, not at all.
The European bison is a large, powerful, and undeniably dangerous animal. Whatever the rewilding romantics might dream, these beasts will never be free to wander down Canterbury High Street, nor will they stampede across a motorway near you. They are, and will remain, prisoners in a fenced wood – an expensive, headline-grabbing zoo without the gift shop.
The most damning criticism, however, is this: the entire experiment has merely proven that the animals had an impact on their enclosure. An impact that could have been replicated for a few hundred pounds with a chainsaw and a digger.
Rewilding risks becoming a laughing stock. When sensible country folk see nearly one and a half million pounds disappear into a fenced copse to prove that big animals knock down trees, they do not feel inspired. They feel insulted.
If the Kent Wildlife Trust truly wishes to make a difference, they might try spending the next £1.45 million on something that does not require a press release, a herd of foreign megafauna, and the suspension of basic rural logic.
Until then, the bison of Blean stand as a monument to money wasted and common sense ignored.