Donate today to help create a Wilder Blean
Meet Kent's newest ecosystem hero: A new bison calf!
A few weeks ago, our bison rangers made the incredible discovery that one of the Wilder Blean bison had successfully given birth to a healthy baby bison. As a growing family, they are going to need as much space as possible - we need your help to give these bison a bigger home.
Donovan Wright
The bison are hard at work, creating a Wilder Blean by restoring the ancient West Blean and Thornden woods, and the baby bison will be joining this team of ecosystem heroes to help create a wilder future. We need your help to maximise the space these bison have to roam, utilising their natural behaviours to allow wildlife to thrive. Your donation will give this bison family the space they need to grow, and help create a bigger, better, more biodiverse home for wildlife in Kent.
Donate to be part of a new era of conservation
Donovan Wright
Donovan Wright
Watch the moment that three bison took their first steps into the Blean here:
People's Postcode Lottery
Join the herd! Donate to create a Wilder Blean today and help support a new era of conservation
Imagine a truly wild woodland, alive with life, colour and sound. This dynamic wild space, a remnant of the ancient woodlands that once covered Britain, is quickly fading into legend... but with your help, we can bring it back.
Evidence gathered from across the world shows that ‘wilder’ approaches to nature conservation provide the most efficient solutions to the increasingly disruptive nature and climate crises. Wilder Blean is the first project of its kind in the UK and marks the beginning of a new era of conservation. This unique wilding project will restore ecological function in the Blean woodlands through the promotion of natural processes and the introduction of European bison, creating more biodiverse habitats full of wildlife.
Here in the UK, we know that introducing grazing animals can vastly improve natural processes within habitats. The use of larger animals in European wilding projects have made more significant difference - this is why we are using European bison.
The natural behaviours of these ecosystem heroes will support vital ecological processes and manage the woodland in a more natural way, allowing us to apply less human intensive methods of conservation. Over the years to come this will ultimately cut our carbon footprint, reduce the cost of managing large scale sites and, most importantly, breathe life and light back into these precious habitats and wildlife.
Watch the video below to see what local primary school students think of the Wilder Blean project!
Credit: Vicky Aitkenhead
Credit: Tom Cawdron
Along with our project partners, Wildwood Trust, Kent Wildlife Trust is incredibly grateful for the financial support of the People’s Postcode Lottery, providing the funds to kickstart this innovative project. We have built the fundamental infrastructure for the introduction of our grazing animals - cows, ponies, pigs and, most significantly, European bison – but we need to do more.
By donating to Wilder Blean, you will be helping us create a bigger, better, more biodiverse home for wildlife in Kent. Our next step is to ensure the bison can roam through their areas of the Blean, utilizing their natural behaviours and promoting landscape connectivity, whilst keeping the Blean open for the public to enjoy.
Donate today to create a Wilder Blean & support a new era of conservation
Donate £33
This could restore the size of a basketball court
Donate £56
This could restore the size of a standard swimming pool
Donate £112
This could restore the size of an Olympic swimming poolIf working apart we are a force powerful enough to destabilise our planet, surely working together we are powerful enough to save it.