History and future of European bison breeding in the Czech Republic

Authors

  • Dalibor Dostál European Wildlife, Česká krajina, European Bison Conservation Center – Regional Office Czech Republic
  • Miloslav Jirků European Bison Conservation Center – Regional Office Czech Republic, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

Keywords:

Bison bonasus, semi-free, population, management culling, captive

Abstract

In Czech Republic, then Czechoslovakia, a modern history of breeding of European bison, after its extinction in the wild, started in 1948 when the first purebred bull Platan arrived to Prague ZOO. In 2017, the stock of European bison in the Czech Republic exceeded 100 individuals, most probably for the first time since its extirpation in the Late Middle Ages. The structure of Czech stock in 2018 is characterized by exceptionally high proportion of animals in semi-free herds (~50%), all belonging to Lowland-Białowieża line (LB), overall dominance of LB animals (~80%), and presence of only Lowland-Caucasian line in all state ZOO herds (~20% of country’s total).

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Published

2018-08-22

How to Cite

Dostál, D., & Jirků, M. (2018). History and future of European bison breeding in the Czech Republic. European Bison Conservation Newsletter, 11, 5–18. Retrieved from http://ojs.wisent.org/index.php/czasopismo/article/view/37

Issue

Vol. 11 (2018)

Section

Peer-reviewed articles

Categories

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Dalibor Dostál, Miloslav Jirků

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.