Why this story matters: This is one of those stories that quietly proves progress doesn’t always come with loud headlines.
Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to rewilding, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results.
It’s a clear winter morning in the village of Armeniș, deep in the southern Carpathian Mountains of southwestern Romania. Fluffy clouds sit atop the mountain peaks as a chill breeze carries a hint of woodsmoke, herbs and freshly baked bread. A steady stream of cars stops at the Dospita bakery. To say that its owner, Mihai Miculescu, is busy would be an understatement.
Finally, over coffee and some freshly baked malai, a Romanian cornbread made with his family’s secret recipe, Miculescu recounts the story of the bison’s return to his homeland.
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The last wild European bison was shot in 1927, and at the time there were fewer than 60 such bison alive in zoos and private parks. As a child, Miculescu had heard stories about great, shaggy beasts that once roamed the Carpathians. Legend has it that one had left its footprints on a rock somewhere in the mountain range, and he hiked to find it. He had also seen the massive animals in a sanctuary before. But his first sighting of a wild bison left an indelible imprint.
“The people from Rewilding Europe […] told us their plan of setting some bison wild in our mountains,” Miculescu says, recalling the moment more than a decade ago when the conservation nonprofit came to the region to discuss their proposals. He wondered what it would mean for him and his community. Would the bison bring tourists? What would happen if people came face-to-face with one?
He had no idea, but — curious to find out — he and his son volunteered to help the team, building the fence for the enclosure which would hold the relocated animals. Finally, the first truck rolled in with its bovine cargo.
A 2025 study in Science shows how the migration of roughly 5,000 bison across Yellowstone National Park’s grasslands is restoring the landscape from the ground up, improving soil microbe density and nitrogen content in soils and plants. Yellowstone’s bison are therefore providing scientists with rare insights into how large herbivores can influence ecosystems.
Today in the Southern Carpathians, the bison, who tip the scales at a nimble 1,000 kg and stand 1.8 meters tall, graze on young trees, allowing meadows to develop, and clear fire corridors in the forest simply by walking through it. When they wallow, like large bovines are wont to, they compact the soil and increase its carbon-holding capacity. Their dung disperses nutrients and over 200 species of undigested seeds across their territory, helping increase floral biodiversity and supporting pollinators. Meanwhile, breeding birds use bison winter fur as nesting material, and magpies follow the herd to pick off ticks and other parasites.
“It is no longer enough to protect what is left of nature; it is also necessary to help nature regain the power to heal,” says Marina Druga, Executive Director of Rewilding Romania.
In 2012, Rewilding Europe, in partnership with WWF Romania and the Municipality of Armeniș, began the project to reintroduce European bison to the Țarcu Mountains in the Southern Carpathians, with support from the EU’s LIFE Programme. The location was perfect — these mountains are a mosaic of habitats ideal for the bison, and have large protected areas in the Domogled-Cerna Valley National Park and the Retezat National Park. This means that the grazers can roam over 150,000 hectares.
But the actual transportation of these massive animals, sourced from reserves in Germany, Italy and within Romania, is not straightforward.
Once rewilded, a new set of challenges emerges. Introduced bison behave somewhat differently from the ones now being born in the wild. “They are relatively used to humans and, in winter, when there isn’t much to graze on, often forage in apple orchards in lower altitudes,” Sebastian Ursuta, who handles communications for Rewilding Romania, says.
Ursuta’s phone is the bison hotline, available to community members who have close encounters with the animals. “The bison are gentle but can look intimidating,” he says. His job is to visit bison contact areas, allay people’s fears about the animals and assess the damage, if any. Rewilding Romania has also successfully piloted training mountain dogs to deter the bison from coming too close to human habitations, and now rangers are always accompanied by canines.
“Once an older guy called and said ‘the bison are here,’ and I was like, ‘okay, did they do any damage?’” Ursuta recounts. “He said they didn’t, ‘but they are here, and I haven’t met a bison before and I don’t know what to do!’” Ursuta, along with rangers like Ioan Simescu, smooths things over when “sometimes the bison help themselves to an apple or two from private orchards, breaking a few branches here and there.”
The practice of hunting poses another challenge. In 2017, a wild European bison was shot after it crossed the border from Poland into Germany, highlighting the need for more comprehensive trans-boundary measures to support bison comeback. Rewilding Romania has been fencing areas close to habitations where the bison tend to stray, but this is expensive and needs regular maintenance.
The incident underscores the need for developing awareness about bison. For Ursuta and the Rewilding Romania team, this means incentivising the community to become “bison smart.”
“By linking bison to local pride, and also local businesses and jobs, we hope to get local people to welcome them into the community,” says Rewilding Romania’s Paula Cristina Bora, who organizes livelihood training, capacity building and outreach programs that help people to see bison as an opportunity instead of threat. Bora recently worked with a local producer to develop an apple spritzer, made with “co-existence apples” bought at prices higher than the market rate from orchards frequented by bison, which is already working its way into cocktails in taverns in Timisoara, the nearest town.
Simescu, a local resident who now works as a guide and ranger with Rewilding Romania, says that reintroducing the bison has created several business opportunities for locals. New homestays and wilderness camps have opened, and some have already begun offering bison-spotting hiking holidays.
In the autumn of 2023, a herd of reintroduced wild bison reportedly migrated naturally from the Țarcu Mountains to the Domogled-Cerna Valley National Park. Ursuta estimates the local bison population at over 250, of which they have rewilded 105. “Way over half of them have now been born in the wild, and we also have a second generation of wild bison,” he says. “We’re carefully selecting new bison for reintroduction, to increase the population’s genetic diversity.”
Contrary to traditional approaches, which feared that rewilding grazing species could further degrade grasslands and meadows, a 2024 study used a model developed by scientists at the Yale School of the Environment and found the opposite. The research has not been peer reviewed but estimates that the nearly 50 square kilometers of grasslands within the wider Țarcu mountains where the European bison herds now live are capturing roughly 10 times as much carbon as they were before the species was reintroduced.
While the population of European bison in the region is still insufficient for long-term viability, their numbers are growing. In July 2025, a ranger spotted some newborn calves in the forest. “Their mothers may not have been completely wild as they were reintroduced to this landscape, but their babies surely are,” Ursuta says. “To us, they offer hope that our rewilding efforts are beginning to pay off.”
Scrolling photos courtesy of Cătălin Josan / Rewilding Romania, Daniel Mirlea and Geetanjali Krishna.
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