NEW PAPER: Why did the European Bison go extinct in the wild – and where to put conservation effort? The European bison is a legendary megafauna species that once inhabited vast lands of Europe. No more. The last European Bison was shot in the wild in 1927. At that time <50 individuals survived in captivity. Due to huge conservation effort, the species has since recovered and been released in translocation projects with free ranging individuals, mostly in Eastern Europe. It is also a target species for many planned rewilding effort in Western Europe, with semi-free ranging bison in areas behind fence. We have just published a new paper in @RSocPublishing elucidating the factors causing the decline and spatio-temporal distribution of European Bison over the past 21,000 years. ow.ly/KE5Q50QijhE (paper with @ecomodeling, @Stuart_C_Brown, @AylaLvL, @Carsten_Rahbek, @DamienFordham) In our paper, we argue that science-based knowledge is important when prioritizing resources into exiting areas with bisons and when/if selecting new areas to translocate or rewild bisons. This to ensuring the species' long-term protection and recovery. I.e., we need to understanding why bisons nearly went extinct in the first place. To do this we build 55,000 models that combined paleoclimate data, vegetation and habitat information, the population growth and expansion of Palaeolithic humans across Eurasia, and bison population and dispersal dynamics. Historical records, fossil evidence, and ancient DNA were used to independently test the model's accuracy. The models allowed us to explored how climate change, hunting by humans, and land use change affected bison population and distribution across Europe – and at a fine spation-temporal resolution. Not everything is the same everywhere at a continental scale. After reconstructing 21,000 years of European bison range dynamics, we concluded that the bison's range began with a massive collapse around 14,700 years ago due to rapid warming of the climate (i.e., Bølling–Allerød warming period) and its effects on bison habitat. After that, the activities of a growing number of humans prevented the bison from bouncing back, and ultimately led to the near-extinction of the species. Our results shows where climate is suitable today in the former realm of the historical distribution of European bison – but equally important also where climate is not suitable or where the species might naturally occur but at very low densities (~50 individuals per 100 km2) in sink habitats at the edge of their natural distribution. This knowledge could improve the on-ground conservation and rewilding of European bison by focusing on regions where effort is more likely to succeed and where the bison would have been a natural part of the ecosystem, if it had not been for humans.
@Carsten_Rahbek Does the date of collapse coincide with the extinction of other species (for example Bison priscus?) Thanks for such an interesting paper
@Carsten_Rahbek This kind of work is soooo important and sadly overlooked. I undertand the appeal of cool rewilding projects, but I cannot stop feeling that many times these are done following romanticised ideas and not real science.