Rewilding: How a herd of bison reintroduced to Romania is helping ‘supercharge’ carbon removal

170 European Bison reintroduced to Romania’s Țarcu mountains could help capture and store the carbon released by up to 84,000 average US petrol cars each year.

New research from Yale University, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggests these massive herbivores could have a role to play in mitigating the impact of climate change.

By grazing a 48 square kilometre area of grassland in a wider landscape of 300 kilometres squared, they helped to capture an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon each year. That is around 10 times the amount that would be captured by the ecosystem without the bison.

The report’s authors note, however, that this figure could be up to 55 per cent higher or lower. The higher figure is the equivalent of around 84,000 US petrol cars annually and the median average is 43,000 cars.

They do this through a combination of evenly grazing grasslands, recycling nutrients which fertilise the soil, dispersing seeds and compacting the soil to prevent carbon from being released. Researchers say that, having evolved alongside this ecosystem for millions of years, their removal has upset the delicate balance, causing carbon to be released.

“These astonishing results show the potential for reintroduced wild animals to supercharge the ability of ecosystems to draw down atmospheric carbon,” says Maheen Khan, climate lead for WWF Netherlands.

The organisation supported the study by WWF Romania, Yale University and the Global Rewilding Alliance together with Rewilding Europe.

“Rewilding in this way is now clearly a major option for policymakers in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change.”

European Bison were almost wiped out across the continent by rampant hunting between the 17th and 19th centuries.

By 1900