Bison-Rewilding-Plan-2014

2.4European bison conservation2.4.1 The European Bison Pedigree BookThe idea of restoring the European bison usingcaptive animals was publicly presented for thefirst time by Polish zoologist J. Sztolcman at the1st International Congress of Nature Protectionin Paris, 1923. In that same year, the InternationalSociety for the Protection of the European Bison(Internationale Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung desWisents) was founded in Frankfurt am Main. Thestatute of the Society included the maintenanceof the European bison by planned breeding anddistribution, followed by introductions to largeforest complexes (Pucek et al. 2004).A particular accomplishment of the societywas the maintenance of the species’ geneticpurity, especially in the early period when therewere numerous hybrids with American bison andcattle produced in various zoos. For this purpose, astudbook was created, the European Bison PedigreeBook (EBPB). The first register of all European bisonliving in the world (at first also their hybrids) waspublished in Germany. With great effort by thefirst editors of the EBPB, all crossbred animalswere eliminated from breeding with pure-bloodEuropean bison. After World War II, the EBPB wasedited in Poland, under the auspices of the StateCouncil of Nature Protection. Since 1993 BialowiezaNational Park, Poland, has published the EBPB(Pucek et al. 2004). It remains an important sourceof data on the numbers of European bison indifferent locations (Pucek et al. 2004).After World War I European bison only survivedin a few European zoological gardens. In 1924 therewere only 54 European bison (29 males, 25 females)originating from 23 founders. However, 11 of thesedid not have pure progenies and so were excludedfrom the pedigree book. The number of foundersof the current population is therefore 12 (WandaOlech, personal communication, 2014). Eleven ofthe 12 founder animals (all B. b. bonasus) originatedsolely from the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, from20