1. This is a short thread about the austere, four-legged shaggy carpets of Europe’s wooded grasslands – the European Bison, or WISSENT. From butterflies to beetles, bees to birds, this thread will touch upon how, eventually, wild Bison could add magic to the countryside.

2. It is thought that our ancient cattle, the aurochs, may have spent more time grazing within scrub and mature woodland, whereas there’s good evidence that wisent prefer broken grasslands. This means that bison can exert complimentary but different influences to cattle.

3. Bison are grassland tree-breakers: the chainsaws of the Eurasian ecosystem. By scratching against, debarking and crunching younger trees, bison keep grasslands open and create glades. The more bison you have, the larger those glades, as 60kg of vegetation is scoffed each day.

4. Such beautifully soft-edged habitats as below, rare in the UK, are hard to manage by human hands. Bison are one animal that maintain this rich world of vegetation ‘fuzz’: bushes, herb stands & expansive open grassland. Dunes once looked this way. Small-scale variety abounds!

5. Worldwide, and especially here in the UK, amphibians are amongst the most threatened of our animal orders. Of all our cornerstone species, Wissent are the best wallowers of all. Each time they decide to wallow and move on, a new amphibian pond is created free of charge.

6. A range of threatened birds, from the woodlark to red-backed shrike, thrive best in heavily disrupted grasslands, with scattered stands of trees or scrub, but good access to ground-dwelling invertebrates. As has been seen in Holland, bison optimize such foraging conditions.

7. For decades, often at great cost and labour expense, butterfly habitats, most of which are best described as disturbed and semi-open, have been commendably created by human hands. Wilder bison, given the chance, effect scrub clearance & complex meadow systems for a lower fee.

8. Right now, in a small enclosure, the Kentish bison’s true impact on the landscape is limited - as yet. But this is an important step. As a nation already in love with cattle & horses, it gives the public the time to consider the true majesty of mega-herbivore Number Three.

9. In time, areas like Salisbury Plain have the scale, habitat and lack of disturbance to support genuinely free-roaming populations of Bison. Their time will come. More details in Rebirding Chapter 12 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rebirding-Restoring-Britains-Benedict-Macdonald/dp/1784272191/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=