Completed projects

On this page we provide an overview of our already completed and published research. Beside a general introduction of the respective topic we prepared summaries of the results for download.

First Steps into the Wild – Exploration Behavior of European Bison after the First Reintroduction in Western Europe

Philip Schmitz, Stephanie Caspers, Paige Warren & Klaudia Witte

Biodiversity is rapidly declining globally. One strategy to help to conserve species is to breed species in captivity and release them into suitable habitats. The way that reintroduced animals explore new habitats and/or disperse from the release site is rarely studied in detail and represents key information for the success of reintroduction projects. The European bison (Bison bonasus L. 1758) was the largest surviving herbivore of the post-glacial megafauna in Europe before it became extinct in the wild, surviving only in captivity since 1919.

We investigated the exploration behavior of a herd of European bison reintroduced into the Rothaargebirge, a commercial forest in low range mountain intensively used and densely populated by humans, in the first six months after release.

We focused on three questions:
(1) how did the European bison move and utilize the habitat on a daily basis,

(2) how did the animals explore the new environment, and

(3) did their habitat preferences change over time.

The European bison dispersed away from their previous enclosure at an average rate of 539 m/month, with their areas of daily use ranging from 70 to 173 ha, their movement ranging from 3.6 km to 5.2 km per day, and their day-to-day use of areas ranged between 389 and 900 m. We could identify three major exploration bouts, when the animals entered and explored areas previously unknown to them. During the birthing phase, the European bison reduced daily walking distances, and the adult bull segregated from the herd for 58 days. Around rut, roaming behavior of the herd increased slightly. The animals preferred spruce forest, wind thrown areas and grassland, all of which are food abundant habitat types, and they avoided beech forest. Habitat preference differed slightly between phases of the study period, probably due to phenological cycles. After six months, the complete summer home range was 42.5 km2.

Our study shows that a small free-ranging herd of European bison can live in an area intensively used by humans and describes in detail the initial roaming behavior and habitat utilization of the animals.

First steps into the wild.

2015 Schmitz etal PLOS ONE.pdf

Adobe Acrobat Dokument 5.2 MB

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Habitat suitability for game animals

Stephanie Caspers

In the first project for the reintroduction of European bison in Germany we investigated the habitat suitability in terms of food availability. The complete planned project area in a private commercial forest in the Rothaargebirge, north of the town Bad Berleburg was under examination. We sampled from ten respective plots the available plant matter and determined biodiversity on ten different habitat types in three phenological seasons of the summer 2012. In a second step a model of habitat quality was calculated for the entire project area of more than 4500 ha.

The analyses showed that the area was very heterogenous in terms of quality and abundance of food plants. A future inplementation of the animals' habitat use shall verify these analyses and anabling us to improve the model.

Fencing of game animals - Practical test of several fencing systems

Philip Schmitz & Klaudia Witte

Management reasons may lead to the necessity to include or exclude wild animals in or from distinct areas. Three different fencing systems were tested in a long term trial within the European bison project.

European bison have the ability to jump even over hurdles of men height. Therefore we excluded an area of the project enclosure using an electric fence. The reactions of all occurring game animals were recorded and evaluated using a camera trap monitoring. We could show that an commercial electric fence of three wires is capable to exclude European bison from formerly used areas. Nevertheless, the fence has to comply strictly to the requirements regarding the hight and construction, and even minor bumps in the ground must be avoided. Other game species were able to cross the fenceline. Such a system is therefore not regarded to be a barrier for game animals.