Bison to be reintroduced to Kent woodland

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
More people are attacked by Cattle than Bison, Bison don't have generations of inbreeding.
Not sure what inbreeding has to do with it if you know what their behaviour patterns are...

Also unclear on the history of the European bison but the Bison populations here are definitely picking from a small genetic pool due to their drastic decline in population and fragmented herds separated by thousands of miles. So if you want to blame inbreeding... applicable to both.

North America has quite a few reintroduction sites for bison. New and old. Most recently would have been in Banff National Park. You’ll notice they pick areas almost as far away from people as possible. Those bison still caused initial problems.

More recently was a farm in Saskatchewan where some wonderful piece of humanity cut all the wires in a fence and released a farms herd of bison. Quite a mess. At least two animals dead last I heard. They’re trying to get things organized to transport them home but the logistics of handling and moving bison are quite involved.

Bison are wonderful animals. The UKs laws and peoples feelings of entitlement will not mesh with such animals. Oil and water.
 

ImLost

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Not sure
The Chillingham cattle (interesting fact - on the state owned by the father in law of Dominic Cummings) are exempt for the simple reason that they have no human interaction at all and can only be viewed from a distance. In essence, they are considered to be wild.
Whether bison would be considered wild too is doubtful as there is (or was) a reasonable sized herd at Lord Newboroughs estate at Rhug, Corwen where you can / could buy organic bison meat

See the bison with Lordy on this promo vid of his estate

Bison aside and the "look at me" nature of lordys video, I think there is actually a few good lessons to be learnt in this video
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
Bison aside and the "look at me" nature of lordys video, I think there is actually a few good lessons to be learnt in this video

They do a lot of good stuff at Rhug. Make (or rather did make) an absolute fortune from the shop and cafe as right on A5 in an excellent location
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
I’ve not got a problem with Rewilding
but only if the rewilders bought the land themselves and paid for the rewilding and the ongoing maintainence of that rewild
Each to their own

it’s when they appear to want to impose the rewilding upon the lawful owners of the land that I have a little difficulty !
I like the idea of some rewilding, but the problem is, that the animals don't stick to the one patch I have read about the problems with sea eagles taking lambs, I have read the book about Knebb Estate, and their animals keep to their land and it sounds great, but if we reintroduced Wolves or Lynx they would roam and take lambs from everywhere (as Sea Eagles presently do). I think the target for environmentalists should be

1. Loss of topsoil and organic matter
2. Loss of land to housing and roads
3. Plastic waste.
4. Rubbish thrown everywhere.
5. Blanket planting of Sitka Spruce forestry.
6. Building wind farms on peat land where oxidation of peat with the roads is greater than carbon saved by wind generation.

then once we have sorted out all those things

look at rewilding land (that they own, buy and pay for)
 

puppet

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
sw scotland
I saw the bison tonight in a 'paddock' with lots of tree stumps about 3 feet high. Apparently they will kill the trees by rubbing the bark and knock them over saving them managing the woodland by hand. Matt asked about the stumps which may have been done by the bison...


...if it had been on a chainsaw course.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Lol I like how you like to throw tags on people. Somehow supporting controlled conservation is bad
We just saw with @Blaithin 's first hand experience, you end up with the ridiculous prospect of farmers / ranchers being controlled as to how close they can graze to the bison AND having to undergo regular TB testing to boot

Sorry, I'm all for watching wildlife on Attenborough and supporting wild reserves but on this tiny island I'm not prepared to see anything or any agency disintegrate our family hill farming tradition
 

WillH

Member
Location
Huddersfield
Having a carpet of mostly bluebells also isn't biodiversity.

You do know somebody hasn't gone out and planted them, and they've covered the wood over hundreds of years and are a naturally occurring part of the habitat

Maybe you think removing some of them and planting another woodland flower would increase the diversity, which while it might do in that it will add another plant species I think that will be about it but that's not going to happen because I doubt you'd find any support for such an idea
 

toquark

Member
I had to turn countryfile off (or rather my wife did as I was getting triggered...)

The chap’s reasoning for the bison introduction was to selectively browse non-native trees to favour native species. The footage then showed them ignoring the plantation Corsican pine, probably because there is zero nutritional value in it and scoring and eating the beech, Hazel and Oak. Matt was even marvelling at the browse line. In Scotland landowners are constantly being pressured by government to reduce deer numbers for the very same reason the bison appear to be being introduced.

Just more eco nutters trousering our cash.
 

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
We just saw with @Blaithin 's first hand experience, you end up with the ridiculous prospect of farmers / ranchers being controlled as to how close they can graze to the bison AND having to undergo regular TB testing to boot

Sorry, I'm all for watching wildlife on Attenborough and supporting wild reserves but on this tiny island I'm not prepared to see anything or any agency disintegrate our family hill farming tradition
I think you are going to be disappointed. The pandemic is costing the public purse big time and will continue to do so. Most hill farms from what I have read are nonviable without subsidies. We already know there are planned cuts to subsidies and the current situation is likely to accelerate this trend, so the great hill farming tradition will probably disintegrate further and be replaced by wilderness. Sorry

Any way don't knock it, taking land out of production is going to give you a bigger market share of what is left.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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