Walking Forum

Main Boards => News and Articles => Topic started by: WhitstableDave on 09:07:15, 10/07/20

Title: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: WhitstableDave on 09:07:15, 10/07/20
From the BBC News website:

European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-53349929) (link)

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/10D56/production/_113305986_2.54508243.jpg)
(Kent Wildlife Trust)

I live only a short walk from Blean Woods, so this is brilliant news for me. The plan by Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Trust (I'm a member of both) is to introduce bison into the woods in early 2022. I can't wait to go bison-spotting!
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 10:09:44, 10/07/20
From the BBC News website:

European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-53349929) (link)

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/10D56/production/_113305986_2.54508243.jpg)
(Kent Wildlife Trust)

I live only a short walk from Blean Woods, so this is brilliant news for me. The plan by Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Trust (I'm a member of both) is to introduce bison into the woods in early 2022. I can't wait to go bison-spotting!
You shall be known as Buffalow Bill of Blean from now on.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Jac on 10:32:30, 10/07/20
Excellent
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: richardh1905 on 11:19:09, 10/07/20
Wonderful.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: ninthace on 16:02:20, 10/07/20
I say,I say,I say, what is the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Warbler on 16:14:17, 10/07/20
I say,I say,I say, what is the difference between a buffalo and a bison?

You can't wash your hands and face in a buffalo  ;)
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Dodgylegs on 23:16:18, 10/07/20
That will be interesting when you meet them!
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Dyffryn Ardudwy on 18:57:29, 11/07/20
Encountering a herd of angry cows, is enough, but stampeding Buffalo-   CRUMBS.
Why introduce a species, with a known very unpredictable temperament, to the Uk.

I was recently watching the Lois Theroux episode, where he was interviewing ex prisoners, in Montana.
The conversation about the Bison or Buffalo, was very interesting, the number of people who lose their lives every year, is significant.


Buffalo, have a known very nasty temperament




The fully grown Buffalo Bulls, are very unpredictable animals, some weighing over a ton.

Not the wisest move, to introduce such large often aggressive creatures, into a country not used to them.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: ninthace on 20:02:25, 11/07/20
An article in the DT says the plan is for just 4 animals (not my idea of a herd) in a fenced area away from public footpaths.  Not losing sleep yet.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: richardh1905 on 21:36:12, 11/07/20
These are not American Buffalo, DA, they are European Bison.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: richardh1905 on 08:13:25, 12/07/20
Interesting article on re-introductions here too:


https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/missing-lynx-how-rewilding-britain-could-restore-its-natural-balance/ar-BB16DhVj?ocid=spartan-ntp-feeds
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Bigfoot_Mike on 08:32:33, 12/07/20
Another interesting story on reintroduction here -


https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem (https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem)
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 07:35:47, 14/07/20
Many years ago I was wandering around Salisbury Cathedral (spire is 123 metres tall).  There was a small museum that had a stuffed Great Bustard in it.  There are plans to reintroduce this bird here.
If one of those ran out at you while walking you would be in for a shock.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Jac on 08:31:51, 14/07/20
.................  There was a small museum that had a stuffed Great Bustard in it.  There are plans to reintroduce this bird here.
If one of those ran out at you while walking you would be in for a shock.

Already done

http://greatbustard.org/
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Birdman on 08:56:11, 14/07/20
Great! Unfortunately it is such a small area.


I really would like to see lynxes and wolves reintroduced. This should be feasible in Scotland. It would do wonders for the landscape in the long run, keeping the deer in check and allowing the forests to recover. They are already doing a good job with restoration of the landscape (re-forestation etc) but apex predators could help to have that happening in a natural way.


I wish I could live 200 years and see how nature has recovered after the coming wars and global warming have wiped out most of humanity.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 08:59:49, 14/07/20
Great! Unfortunately it is such a small area.


I really would like to see lynxes and wolves reintroduced. This should be feasible in Scotland. It would do wonders for the landscape in the long run, keeping the deer in check and allowing the forests to recover. They are already doing a good job with restoration of the landscape (re-forestation etc) but apex predators could help to have that happening in a natural way.


I wish I could live 200 years and see how nature has recovered after the coming wars and global warming have wiped out most of humanity.
Disregarding war, climate change does not look good for wildlife, it is happening to fast to allow for habitat transformation.
And I am not sure what wildlife would like an even more wet and windy UK.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Birdman on 10:22:07, 14/07/20
Disregarding war, climate change does not look good for wildlife, it is happening to fast to allow for habitat transformation.
And I am not sure what wildlife would like an even more wet and windy UK.


I agree that climate change is too fast and that many species will be lost because of that. However, habitat destruction by humans is an even bigger threat than that. The problem is, of course, that climate change is likely to accelerate habitat destruction by humans because we'll need new places to live and grow crops when the current ones disappear.


My expectation (crystal ball) is that these pressures will result in major wars that will set us as a species back hundreds of years or more. Human population will collapse and in many areas nature will take over again, like what happened in Tsjernobyl or Central America. This hasn't happened on a global scale yet, but there are many examples in history where locally people wiped themselves out by not taking enough care of their environment. Currently, we are so dependent on global systems (energy from the Middle East, electronic parts from Asia, food from all over the world, data from offshore datacentres that can be destroyed in a major war - much of our  knowledge lost, because who writes paper books nowadays?). So if this falls apart, many areas won't be able to survive. And the areas that do survive will be set back centuries because of the unavailability of resources and the knowledge that was lost.


Imagine most of our electronics gets destroyed by an EMP during a major conflict and global supply lines are cut. That's the end of civilisation as we know it. People will kill each other over the few remaining resources and most will die, ending up with just a few pockets where people survive on sustenance farming. None of these pockets will have knowledge or resources to rebuild what was before. Nobody knows how to design and produce a transistor, let alone a microprocessor. So we are going back to the iron age, more ore less, with population numbers to match. Then, nature will start reclaiming the earth.


We are currently living in the middle of a mass extinction event. We will end up with a greatly reduced number of species, but some of them will thrive in the new environment. Hopefully the few species-rich nature areas that still exist can serve as a starting point when they get taken over by nature. Like the little hills that you come across in the jungle of Guatemala, which are actually cities that were reclaimed by nature hundreds of years ago after the human population wiped itself out. It's going to be awesome.


 
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Jac on 10:34:43, 14/07/20
My expectation (crystal ball) ............................  It's going to be awesome.
Unfortunate that we wont be around to appreciate it :(
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 13:25:22, 14/07/20
I am not as pessimistic as some about change in general, and especially climate change.
One thing that the human world will not loose is knowledge, that makes life a lot easier.


It is odd how we tend to look at land based 'stuff', while most of the Earth is water.  This is where the most important changes happen.  Humans can easily adapt, even to rising sea levels (though the scale of that is currently slow, storm surges will have a greater effect, and these will happen more frequently).
There really is no shortage of land and the Northern Hemisphere has a surplus of land that will become suitable for food and irrigation (Steppe and Prairies).  This will, in effect, free up areas that are currently used.
What the human race has to do is adapt faster than the 40 km a century that the agricultural line is currently moving Northwards.
The fastest way to do this, without conflict, is more global trade and loosening immigration criteria.

So the UK is well ahead of the game here come next year with all these trade deals we are going to do without the interference of the EU.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Birdman on 14:27:00, 14/07/20

One thing that the human world will not loose is knowledge,


That is a dangerous assumption. It has happened before. In Western Europe in the middle ages and 500 years ago in the Inca empire, for example.


I admit that my view is pretty apocalyptic, but imagine what would happen in a global war where an EMP wipes out most electronics and also datacentres get destroyed or become inaccessible. If the whole world (the survivors) fractures into different groups fighting each other, how would you know how to build microprocessors again and have the resources to do it? And without that, much of current knowledge is inacessible.


In old times, you just needed somebody who knew how to forge steel and then you were able to make ploughs again. But now we depend on very complex systems that, when destroyed, cannot be easily be reconstructed by a local group of sustenance farmers. I think many people underestimate how fragile the whole thing is.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 15:56:45, 14/07/20

That is a dangerous assumption. It has happened before. In Western Europe in the middle ages and 500 years ago in the Inca empire, for example.


I admit that my view is pretty apocalyptic, but imagine what would happen in a global war where an EMP wipes out most electronics and also datacentres get destroyed or become inaccessible. If the whole world (the survivors) fractures into different groups fighting each other, how would you know how to build microprocessors again and have the resources to do it? And without that, much of current knowledge is inacessible.


In old times, you just needed somebody who knew how to forge steel and then you were able to make ploughs again. But now we depend on very complex systems that, when destroyed, cannot be easily be reconstructed by a local group of sustenance farmers. I think many people underestimate how fragile the whole thing is.
The Dark Ages led to the Renaissance, a lot of innovation event on back then.
Any half decent data centre will have back up systems that can cope, even down to spare hardware that can be brought into use. Including generators.
And then there is all the paper backups.
These days we tend not to kill too many people in wars, we knock out key communications and industries, topple governments, then rebuild the country.
"The world will end with a whimper, not a bang"
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: watershed on 19:03:33, 14/07/20


So the UK is well ahead of the game here come next year with all these trade deals we are going to do without the interference of the EU.


Probably wont be the"UK" much longer looking at recent polls
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: ninthace on 20:03:17, 14/07/20
Can I suggest the Japanese model?  As societies become more sophisticated and crowded the birth rate falls leading initially to an aging population putting a burden on the labour force, but in time leading to a reduced but technically sophisticated population.
Birdman - while I do not underestimate the effects EMP your view may be  somewhat dated.  Many critical systems are now hardened and a lot of storage is impervious to EMP.   The bigger issue is surviving the cause of the EMP and the aftermath in the first place.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 21:32:30, 14/07/20
The bigger issue is surviving the cause of the EMP and the aftermath in the first place.
We are well overdue a massive solar flare similar to the 1859 Carrington event, calculated at X50, the 2003 event was initially thought to be a piffling X28, but upgraded to X45 later.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: ninthace on 22:25:26, 14/07/20
We are well overdue a massive solar flare similar to the 1859 Carrington event, calculated at X50, the 2003 event was initially thought to be a piffling X28, but upgraded to X45 later.
I was rather thinking of the EMP associated with man made sunshine followed by a long cold spell. 
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 09:36:02, 15/07/20
I was rather thinking of the EMP associated with man made sunshine followed by a long cold spell.
Interesting.  Castle/Bravo was the largest bomb detonated by the USA (1954) and it released 63,000 TJ.  Or 3,888,888.8 kWh (if that was electricity bought in the UK it would costs around £2.33 million).
As a quick approximation, the world uses around 168,000,000,000 kWh/day (168 TWh/day).
So to release the same amount of energy that the world uses every day, the USA would need to explode 43,200 Castle/Bravo a day.


So the real problem is not a 'nuclear winter' it is out insistence of burning fossil fuels.

Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Birdman on 09:36:32, 15/07/20
Birdman - while I do not underestimate the effects EMP your view may be  somewhat dated.  Many critical systems are now hardened and a lot of storage is impervious to EMP.   The bigger issue is surviving the cause of the EMP and the aftermath in the first place.


The EMP in itself maybe survivable and data not destroyed, but the problem is society falling apart (worldwide) and breaking into small fractions fighting each other for bare survival. For example, to get a datacentre running again, you'll need a working grid and parts that are made in China. This may not be a priority for a local community. After a few weeks, the local community will take the datacentre apart just for the raw materials when shelter and food become the main priority. People are cold and hungry.


This may sound implausible, but it really doesn't take much for society to fall apart. For example, look what happened in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. And that was only a localised event. Imagine a disaster on a global scale.


We are incredibly lucky that most of us have never seen a global war/ disaster in our lifetime, and therefore think it can't happen and things will work out fine. But our globalised supply chains and reliance on electronics that can be knocked out with a handful of EMP weapons makes us incredibly vulnerable to a total breakdown of society and all the things we now take for granted. I agree with you that datacentres itself are well protected and backed up, so in theory data could get restored. But that may not happen because society breaks down when people start killing each other for food and shelter.




Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 09:39:47, 15/07/20

The EMP in itself maybe survivable and data not destroyed, but the problem is society falling apart (worldwide) and breaking into small fractions fighting each other for bare survival. For example, to get a datacentre running again, you'll need a working grid and parts that are made in China. This may not be a priority for a local community. After a few weeks, the local community will take the datacentre apart just for the raw materials when shelter and food become the main priority. People are cold and hungry.


This may sound implausible, but it really doesn't take much for society to fall apart. For example, look what happened in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. And that was only a localised event. Imagine a disaster on a global scale.


We are incredibly lucky that most of us have never seen a global war/ disaster in our lifetime, and therefore think it can't happen and things will work out fine. But our globalised supply chains and reliance on electronics that can be knocked out with a handful of EMP weapons makes us incredibly vulnerable to a total breakdown of society and all the things we now take for granted. I agree with you that datacentres itself are well protected and backed up, so in theory data could get restored. But that may not happen because society breaks down when people start killing each other for food and shelter.
Or people start to do what they always have and cooperate and rebuild a better society.
Worth reading Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: Birdman on 10:13:58, 15/07/20
Or people start to do what they always have and cooperate and rebuild a better society.


Very idealistic, but that won't happen if all means of communication are down. And you certainly won't get the replacement parts from China in order to restore these communication links. So nobody really knows what is happening and even a central authority (if that still exists) wouldn't be able to command anything. The only kind of cooperation that I would expect in that situation is local communities organising their defence against raiding parties from neighbouring villages, or organising raiding parties yourself to survive because you have only one day food left.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: rigby on 11:53:07, 15/07/20
superb! they're much easier on the soil underfoot than regular cattle and think of all that yummy mozzarella
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: ninthace on 12:21:54, 15/07/20
superb! they're much easier on the soil underfoot than regular cattle and think of all that yummy mozzarella
Doesn't mozzarella come from Water Buffalo?
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: SteamyTea on 12:34:56, 15/07/20
Doesn't mozzarella come from Water Buffalo?
Mine comes from Lidl.
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: ninthace on 12:49:38, 15/07/20
Mine comes from Lidl.
I had to expand the search radius on the Lidl website to 50km to find the nearest Lidl.  It may be a while before I shop there.  ;)
Title: Re: European bison to be introduced into Kent woodland
Post by: windyrigg on 17:27:53, 24/07/20
I drove out to Poland years ago to see the remaining European bison there. I was directed to them really quickly by a forester and watched a family group slowly coming towards me in open woodland. Slightly unsure of how they would react to me, when they were about 50yds off I got 10ft up a tree. They were totally uninterested and fed past me on either side of the tree. They took so little interest I'm still not sure if they actually knew I was there! Probably wouldn't want to get one annoyed though....