Ancient breeds will act as ecosystem engineers to convert commercial pine plantation into a wild wood
The UK’s first wild bison in millennia have been joined by iron-age pigs, Exmoor ponies and longhorn cattle as the rewilding project moves forward in creating a rich and natural new habitat.is deploying the animals to replicate the roles played by mega-herbivores when bison, aurochs and wild horses roamed prehistoric England. The animals will be closely monitored as they transform a former commercial pine plantation into a wild wood.
“This is where the project really starts to come to fruition,” said Paul Hadaway, of Kent Wildlife Trust , which runs the project along with the Wildwood Trust. “We’ve had thesettling into this site and doing some amazing stuff. But the intention was always to have as close to a natural grazing assemblage as we could recreate.
“If you go back to when these English woodlands first evolved, they would have had mega-herbivores. So this is about returning back to that kind of natural management, to create a much more climate-resilient, adaptable landscape. The pigs are each capable of ploughing about four acres of land a year.”
Alison Ruyter, also of KWT, said: “Wilder grazing is about using native wild breeds of livestock to mimic the things that mega-herbivores would have done in the past when wild horses, aurochs and bison roamed around the country.”
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