'We have to work with nature': What UK's only wild bison herd can teach us about the nature crisis

Everybody’s to-do list has recurring items, and Hannah Mackins’ is no different. Each and every day she clocks in to work, she must set out into an ancient woodland in Kent and attempt to find a herd of bison. This is a legal requirement. 

Some days, the GPS trackers on the bison work and it is a simple task. But the thick forest often jams up the signal, so Mackins goes back to basics. If she finds dung with flies, it has been there for an hour or so. She’s learned to tell how old a footprint is. Should it come to it, there are always the sounds of branches crackling and breaking. “Sometimes you will just find us in the woods, stood on a tree stump, hands around our ears, just listening,” she says. 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

It’s probably fair to assume Mackins is never met with boredom when she tells people at parties what she does for a living: She’s a bison ranger at a pioneering project in the Wilder Blean woods, run by the Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Trust, which has reintroduced wild bison to the UK. Part of a growing rewilding movement in the UK, the project released bison into the woods near Canterbury in 2022. An initial herd of three has grown to eight, with a bull added to the mix and four calves born on the reserve.

Ultimately, it is hoped that the bison will help change the habitat, making the woods truly wild and reversing a decline in nature. Strictly speaking it is “wilding”, not rewilding. Management of the forest, in effect, is handed over to the animals. Already they are making the woods less overgrown, trampling trees and getting rid of bracken and bramble, says Mackins. This creates light, allowing vulnerable flower species, butterflies and invertebrates to flourish. 

But the project has not been easy, and points to the challenges ahead if the UK wishes to get back to nature. As well as massive funding challenges, the Kent bison project has run into legal hurdles. 

“This isn’t just a fluffy story about bison, as much as I adore the bison,” says Mackins. “Ultimately, when we lose biodiversity, we increase the risk from the climate crisis. Particularly down here in Kent, we are going to be the first to feel the effects of the climate crisis in the UK. We already know that having biodiversity will help us to mitigate some of the climate crisis impacts.” 

She adds: “We’re very quick to look at the decreasing populations of things like giraffes and lions over in Africa, but what a lot of people don’t realise is, we beat them to it. We have already lost the majority of our species.” 

• Beavers are back in London’s waterways after 400 years away
• ‘Nature is slowly healing’: How rewilding is bringing Britain’s extinct species back from the dead

While there is momentum behind rewilding, the wider context is not so bright. Listen to conservation experts, government ministers, or anybody involved in the scene, and you’ll hear the same factoid: the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. As of January 2024, the UK’s plans on meeting legally binding biodiversity targets were “largely off track”. 

These targets include halting the decline in species abundance by 2030, restoring or creating over 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats, and improving species abundance beyond 2022 levels by 2042. 

In August, soon after coming into office, the Labour government promised that a “rapid review” of the Environmental Improvement Plan would be completed by the end of 2024. News stories about beavers and water voles trickle through, but it falls to projects like the Wilder Blean bison to show how it can be done. 

European bison went extinct in the wild in the 20th century, saved only from complete obliteration by the efforts of conservationists. They are the heaviest land mammals in Europe, and had never been seen wild in the UK before the Kent Wildlife Trust took them from a zoo. 

The first hurdle – although hopefully not a literal hurdle – was the fence. Bison are considered a dangerous wild animal, says Mackins, and are treated under the same legislation as lions and tigers, so need the same level of fencing as zoos have. Except most zoos do not have a 200-hectare enclosure. Funded with a grant from the People’s Postcode Lottery, the fencing cost just shy of £1m. 

Then the project thought they’d need to apply for licences for the bison, only to find that they didn’t exist. “Because no one had ever tried to reintroduce bison before there wasn’t legislation for us to apply to,” says Mackins. One option was becoming, for legal purposes, a zoo. They didn’t want that. Another was becoming farmland and treating the bison as domestic cattle. To help future projects, the team are now working with Natural England to create legislation. 

When the bison arrived, it was expected they’d need supplementary feeding for a good while – only for the rangers to find the bison enjoyed the natural vegetation so much a top-up wasn’t necessary. While they barge through the woodland and cut down trees, they avoid other species. “It’s not just mindlessly bashing through the woodlands, they know what they’re doing out there. They know what species to eat, what species to leave alone,” says Mackins. A set of bison bridges are being built to allow the bison to move between areas in the woodland, which will expand the site from 50 to 200 hectares. 

As the herd grows, the rangers have begun wondering what the maximum size of the herd might be, with current guesses of around 10 adult bison at maximum capacity. Youngsters aren’t counted for the first few years of their lives, but could potentially move to other projects. “What we hope will happen eventually is other bison herds will start to crop up around the country,” says Mackins. 

If the UK is to achieve its goals, rewilding must move from individual projects to a widespread, changed approach to nature, says Chris Sandom, a senior lecturer in biology at the University of Sussex and a leading expert on rewilding. 

“The problem we have at the moment is small action at great expense,” says Sandom. 

“That’s important for protecting species, but if we really want to halt decline, we have to work with nature, much more effectively.” 

Along with innovative projects – such as a landmark £2.2m community buyout of moorland in Scotland – Sandom hopes for breakthrough moments in rewilding, like wider acceptance of species like beavers, and a reduced need for fencing around rewilding projects. Ultimately, however, much has been lost. “I think we’ve lost our sense of nature, we’ve lost our ability to understand and interpret nature. We just don’t understand it any more. I think that makes it very hard for people to make decisions or understand why we need space for nature”. 

As an example, Sandom cites biodiversity net gain policy. Introduced in February 2024, new housing developments need to show a 10% increase in nature. This is achieved by targeting areas with low nature value, or offsetting unavoidable nature loss. But this can be applied too strictly, and Sandom believes a wider more flexible approach would deal with the uncertainty of nature better. 

“We need ecologically literate policy, and that’s going to be quite difficult to create,” he says. 

The headline-generating presence of the Kent bison has got others interested, says Mackins. Although it has not been wildlife trusts, but private landowners in Cumbria and Devon, who’ve expressed an interest in starting their own herds. Inquiries have focused around how to get the licences, and how to source the bison. 

It may take as long as 10 years to conclusively know what benefits the bison bring. But if, once the data is collected, they match with what Mackins has already seen – that the bison have adapted quickly and are thriving – we may be closer to her vision of wilder islands: “I have a dream where you can drive through the countryside, and when you get home, your windscreen is covered in bugs.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. This winter, you can make a lasting change on a vendor’s life. Buy a magazine from your local vendor in the street every week. If you can’t reach them, buy a Vendor Support Kit.