100 Years Bison Restitution

1923 – 2023 Centenary of the beginning of the restitution of the European bison to its territories

 

Estimada/o amiga/o

Te envío una nota de prensa sobre el Centenario de la cumbre paneuropea celebrada en Berlín el 26 de agosto de 1923, en la que  científicos y conservacionistas de varias naciones, que acababan de  enfrentarse en la I Guerra Mundial, acordaron reparar el daño que habían causado sus ejércitos a una especie emblemática de Europa y América, como es el bisonte, aniquilando hasta el último de ellos en el bosque de Bialowieza, que comparten a partes iguales Polonia y Bielorusia en su frontera.

Lamentablemente, los 700 bisontes de Bielowieza, que viven hoy en ese bosque vuelven a estar de nuevo amenazados, por tercera guerra.

Tras la reunión de 1923 su población se recuperó en ese bosque, pero en la II Guerra Mundial los soldados y los furtivos hambrientos volvieron a exterminar a todos los bisontes que quedaban en libertad.

Como en 1917, en 1945 solo quedaron vivos el medio centenar de bisontes que había en zoos. A partir de ellos se volvió a retomar la labor de aumentar sus efectivos y hoy hay ya más de 10.000 bisontes europeos en una docena de países de la Unión Europea, entre ellos 170 en España desde 1910.

Una historia del éxito la de esta primera iniciativa internacional para salvar una especie de la extinción, en la que puedes encontrar más información en la Nota de Prensa que te adjunto al lado y en un libro digital en PDF que se distribuye en : https://elcarabo.com/producto/100-years-of-bison-conservation/

Actualmente trabajo en la comunicación de los esfuerzos que se hacen en España y Portugal por cooperar en el esfuerzo internacional de salvar esta especie, que antes de la domesticación de los grandes herbívoros se contaba por millones tanto en Europa como en América, con lo que si te interesara, para recibir las notas de prensa mensuales que emitiré la ley de protección de datos requiere que me envíes un email indicándome tu consentimiento para que te envíe dichas notas de prensa.

Decirte que tu país sale extensamente mencionado en esta historia que amplía la nota de prensa sobre la epopeya de esos “100 años de conservación del bisonte”, por la implicación en este proyecto de varios de tus compatriotas.

Un saludo,
Benigno Varillas

 

(More information in:  https://elcarabo.com/producto/100-years-of-bison-conservation/ 

100 years have passed since August 26th, 1923 the international community met in Berlin to create an organisation that would prevent the extinction of the European bison. On that anniversary we released the online version of the book “Recover the Free: 100 years Bison conservation” for digital download, translated into English, which summarises that long and incredible story that prevented the extinction of the bison.

Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (1928–1980)  wanted to know more about the people that  had painted them. Which took him in 1979 to Canada, where a Indian legend spoke about one last gatherer–hunting ethnic group, survived in the Nahanni river until the 20th century.
This book tells that story and illustrates the background that has led the author to create reserves to recover bison, aurochs, tarpan and other fauna, as well as the free human being from the future Biolithic, developing the information society in areas abandoned by farmers and rewilding Spain with wildlife.

Press release / Nota de Prensa

 

Centenary of the initiative to prevent European Bison extinction: The war in Ukraine recommends expanding its populations in new territories

On August 26, 2023, it is the centenary of the first initiative to prevent the extinction of the European Bison. 

In World War I, the last European bison were shot dead. Only fifty, who had been held in zoos, survived. In hundred years of international efforts, the bison population has managed to 10,000 specimens. But again a war threatenshim. “Over 90% of wild European bison occurring in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The outbreak of open war in Ukraine will likely require new approaches to collaborative conservation across the species historic range” said Dr Glenn Plumb, Chair of the IUCN Bison Specialist Group. 

At the beginning of 1915, shortly before the great disaster, in Białowieża the bison had recovered up to 770 specimens of the many millions of these great herbivores that 10,000 years ago occupied all of Europe, but in World War I chaos took over the area and was killed all Bialowieza bison. Only 54 bison, sent before to several European zoos, were alive.

At the International Conservation Congress of Nature held in Paris on June 2, 1923, the Polish naturalist Jan Sztolcman, deputy director of the Warsaw Zoological Museum, proposed to recover the European bison from the few specimens that had survived. The Americans had begun to do the same in 1902. 

On August 26, 1923, the International Society for the Conservation of Bison was established in Berlin. Most of the founders were scientists and breeders of German zoos. The entity had to cross national borders if they wanted to achieve the dispersion of the bison in its former territories. “This great task brings together representatives of different countries to cooperate, free of political considerations and influences, in an important case from the point of view of ideals and the scientist” said its first president, the director of the Frankfurt Zoo, Kurt Priemel. The objective was to promote an international nature protection organization. The bison left in the zoos were 29 males and 25 females.

A genealogical book of the European bison, the first and only one that has been made of a wild species, controls the crosses that can be made between them to reduce inbreeding.

In World War II, the killing of all the wild bison in this area was repeated and again the species had to recover from the fifty hundred that the zoos kept in captivity, descendants of only twelve founders. Inbreeding affects skeletal growth, leads to asymmetry of the skull and deformation of male gonads, decreases female fertility and resistance to diseases and parasites. Epidemics are a serious danger to the bison. In the Bialowieza forest, 20% of the casualties are caused by diseases.

In 1949 there were 69 bison of valuable genetic line, which lived in four Polish and two Soviet breeding reserves. That figure represented something like more than half of the entire world population at that time. The European bison was reintroduced in 1952 in the Polish, and in 1953, in the Belorussian part of the Białowieża forest. In 1957, the first bison was born in the wild. Later, specimens were also released in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Slovakia. Today 10,000 bison live in semi freedom in a dozen of countries. The Ukraine war recommends expanding its populations into new territories. 

E mail: benigno.varillas@wild-europe.com,

About BV: (www.about.benignovarillas.work 

WEB: www.laestirpedeloslibres.club,

Difital BOOK in pdf: «100 years of Bison conservation» 

 

Book Index:

Essences of the Altamira cave painter 15 

The soul of the Paleolithic Spaniards 25 

The extinction of the American bison 38 

Persecution of the Paleolithic natives 48 

Neolithic viruses are ahead 58 

Bison to make the rural profitable 69 

Essential Large herbivores 85 

Albert I of Monaco and the bison 95 

The habitat of the bison 111 

What happened to the Altamira bison? 115 

Bison schoetensacki lived in Spain 117 

The return of the bison to America 128 

Ted Turner and his bison 139 

The bison returns to Mexico 141 

The return of the bison to Europe 142 

Wanda Olech and the bison 151 

Rewilding Europe and the bison 154 

The return of the bison to Spain 158 

Fernando Morán and his bison 175 

Yvonne Kemp and south Europe bison 176 

The Bison Specialist Group (BSG) 181 

Help rewilding with bison in Spain 183 

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