What does this project mean for me?

Yes absolutely and we'd love to see you there. The European bison will remain in a controlled, double-fenced trial area away from public footpaths. Generally bison are known to be very timid and calm in fact in the Netherlands, where bison are used more widely, people are able to walk through areas where bison are present without any issues, so long as people maintain a respectful distance.

Kent Wildlife Trust has been safely managing conservation grazing in West Blean with horses and cows for many years and our partners Wildwood Trust staff have extensive experience of managing bison in a variety of settings. We have robust systems in place to ensure that animals are safe, well, and therefore should never want to leave this beautiful area. Nonetheless, we have all appropriate risk assessments and emergency procedures in place, so that specially trained teams can be deployed quickly to deal with an emergency, in the unlikely event that one does occur.

As well as the fenced-off bison area which will have raised viewing points, the site will have free-roaming cattle and horses as it has done for many years and in addition, there will be a small number of pigs (currently planned to be around 4 pigs).  

However, you may start to see these animals in areas of the woodland where you hadn’t before. As with all livestock and wild animals, you should always keep a respectful distance away and dogs should be kept on a lead so as not to cause the animals stress. These animals, whilst safe, are not pets and are here to do a job. They should never be fed by the public.

The public footpaths are not changing.

There are many footpaths crossing the site and these won’t be changing. We know the site is used by many different groups of people and we want to make sure that it continues to be safe to visit. Nothing will be changing immediately, however as the infrastructure will be changed and upgraded we want to hear from all user groups as to how this might affect them.

In addition to the current Wild Art Trail which will remain, we are planning to improve the surfaces of some of the paths making them more accessible to wheelchair and reduced-mobility users.

We will be building viewing towers so that visitors can look out over the bison area and we plan to make these as accessible as possible. The parking bays for blue badge holders will remain.

An entirely new perimeter stock fence is being installed, added to which the bison will be inside another fence within this area.

Supporting the work of our rangers, we will have a team of volunteers dedicated to carrying out regular fence checks to ensure our site always remains safe and secure.