September 2012. For hundreds of thousands of years Aurochs were a feature of
the European wilderness. Since the death of the last aurochs in 1627 in the
Jaktorow game preserve in Poland, it seemed that Europe has lost this key
species forever. However European Wildlife, in cooperation with the Dutch
Taurus Foundation, is planning to return Aurochs to the mountains of Central
Europe.
The project is part of a program of the
European Centre of Biodiversity whose aim is to protect endangered species and
to reintroduce the ones that have become extinct in many places - European
bison, wild cats or wild bees. And the aurochs, of course.
Cross breeding
The Dutch Taurus Foundation is preparing two herds that they hope will form the base for semi-wild breeding herds of aurochs in the mountains of the Czech Republic. The aurochs are being ‘recreated' by cross-breeding the suitable primitive breeds of cattle from the whole of Europe within the Tauros Programme.
The Dutch Taurus Foundation is preparing two herds that they hope will form the base for semi-wild breeding herds of aurochs in the mountains of the Czech Republic. The aurochs are being ‘recreated' by cross-breeding the suitable primitive breeds of cattle from the whole of Europe within the Tauros Programme.
"The central idea of the Tauros
Programme is to find the European bovine breeds with the best ‘primitive'
characteristics and breed them into a new fully self-sufficient cattle breed.
It will not be an exact copy of the aurochs, but will be very close, so we will
call the animal the Tauros. The breeding should be done on a large scale
because large numbers are needed," said Ronald Goderie, a board member of
the Taurus Foundation. The Aurochs is the animal to choose as our reference,
because after about 400.000 years of evolution, the Aurochs had turned into an
animal perfected for the European situation.
QUESTIONS?
What is
the goal of this project? Is it to save the butterflies that are suffering due
to lack of grazing animals? You don't need to create a new species to do that.
Is it
to recreate an extinct species? This may be possible, one day, with DNA tricks
in embryos, but that is not what is being planned here.
Begins
to sound a little like a vanity project.
Ancient
breed to return to Central Europe
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