Two wooden bridges near Canterbury just doubled the living space for Britain's only free-roaming herd of European bison — without a single strand of new fencing crossing a public footpath.

  • 100 hectares of woodland now open to the herd, up from 50
  • 43 kilometers of fencing legally required to separate bison from the public
  • 2022 the year the herd was first released into West Blean and Thornden Woods
  • 1 — the number of UK herds of free-roaming European bison, making this a genuine national first

Why bison needed a bridge

European bison are classed as "dangerous wild animals" under UK law, so Kent Wildlife Trust has to keep 43km of fencing between the herd and the walking trails that crisscross West Blean and Thornden Woods. That worked fine for containment, but it also meant the bison were boxed into roughly half the woodland the project had hoped to rewild.

The fix, engineered over the past two years, is a pair of bridges that let hikers walk over the bison rather than around them. The animals pass underneath on their own paths; people get a raised vantage point and, with luck, a glimpse of a two-ton grazer going about its business. The 100-hectare expansion effectively doubles the herd's range in one move.

What the bigger range means for the woods

Wilder Blean bills itself as a proof of concept: can bison, extinct in Britain for thousands of years, still do the ecological job that only large grazers can do? Bison debark trees, wallow in the soil, and trample through undergrowth in ways that open up clearings for insects, fungi, and understory plants that a manicured woodland never gets. More hectares means more of that disturbance, spread across a bigger and more varied patch of ancient woodland.

The bridge project was funded by a coalition that includes the National Lottery Heritage Fund, National Highways' Network for Nature programme, the Michael Uren Foundation, the Veolia Environmental Trust, and the Garfield Weston Foundation, on top of private donors. Kent Wildlife Trust says it is now working with the Woodland Trust and the RSPB on the next decade of the Wilder Blean Initiative.

"Our wildlife is in trouble, and we need to think differently about how we deliver conservation projects in the UK if we are to change our future," said Simon Bateman-Brown of Kent Wildlife Trust. "Bison are no more dangerous than domestic cattle and, in other parts of the world, they roam freely in public areas."

The long-term goal: fewer fences, not more bridges

Bateman-Brown is candid that bridges and miles of steel fencing are not the end state Kent Wildlife Trust actually wants. The charity's stated long-term vision is to swap the current perimeter for electric fencing and eventually let the herd roam with far less infrastructure — a change that depends on UK law catching up with what other European countries already allow for reintroduced bison.

Until then, engineering solutions like the new bridges are what keep the project moving. Visitors to West Blean and Thornden Woods can now cover twice as much ground with a real chance of spotting the herd, and the trust says anyone who wants to help fund the next phase can do so through its Save Our Woodlands appeal or its Bison Benefactor donor programme.

For a species that vanished from British landscapes millennia ago, a doubled range in ancient Kent woodland is a small but concrete step back toward normal.