“It’s like we’re in Jurassic Park »whispers Adrian Grancea. Binoculars around his neck, he advances as silently as possible on the carpet of dead leaves. The path climbs between an electric fence and a wooden barrier. Suddenly, two deer appear, like two bouncing balls thrown between the beeches and birches. The bison will not appear until a little further on. Their tails, agitated in an incessant swing, allow them to be spotted. Seven females, with scorched earth fur, arched horns and long goatee, enjoy the sun. Three males reveal their massive silhouettes between the trees. “I’m super happy with this group, the bison don’t fight and they’ve already mixed together”rejoices Mr. Grancea.
A few days earlier, at the end of May, the head of the bison project of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Romania welcomed these animals about fifteen kilometers from Armenis, in the southwest of the country. First, ten young ones from a reserve in Germany, then four arrived from Sweden. Almost every year since 2014, individuals have been transported to the Tarcu Mountains, in the southern Carpathians. After hours of transport, a truck arrives in this green and hilly region, dotted with villages with low and colorful houses. The road quickly plunges into a valley overlooked by immense trees.
In front of the entrance to the “acclimatization zone”, a vast enclosed space of 13 hectares In the middle of the woods, the road widens just enough for the truck to turn around. Its doors open and the bison rush out, cross a bridge, climb a small hill. The operation can take two hours, or ten. When it arrives, the herd from Germany has come back down the hill to pick up a female that has remained frozen inside the vehicle.
In mid-July, the barriers of the acclimatization zone were opened in turn and the 14 bison joined their new playground: a vast wilderness of more than 160,000 hectares where one of the last virgin forests in Europe still remains. Armenis, with 2,230 inhabitants, is located between four national parks and a nature park. Some 180 bison now live in this territory.
From “vulnerable” to “near threatened”
The reintroduction of the continent’s largest land mammal is one of the success stories of conservation. The story of a charismatic animal that survived from prehistoric times, was driven to extinction and was only narrowly saved by the crazy initiative of a handful of Europeans. A hundred years ago, the Bison bonasus – it is different from the American bison – is declared extinct in the wild. Elongated head, hump at the shoulders, there are then 54 individuals left on the planet, all in captivity. Only twelve will give descendants. Today, more than 9,100 bison are present across Europe, of which nearly 7,000 live in freedom in a dozen countries including Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Romania.
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