The beginning of autumn gave us an extremely pleasant event - on September 4 in Mykolaiv Zoo in the family of bison (Bison bonasus) Murka and Gaya had a replenishment: a bison (female) was born. The mother and newborn are feeling very well, they are now on display at the ungulate department. The female Gaya is a caring mother who protects her baby. The baby bison is active and inquisitive. This is the fourth birth of a bison in our zoo in the last ten years, whose parents are Murko and Gaya.
Murko was born on April 24, 2009, and came to us on April 20, 2010 from Kyiv, and Gaya was born on October 29, 2009 and arrived on November 21, 2013 from Tallinn. Their first-born male Murza, born in 2015, and the female Muza, born in 2016, were transferred to Storozhynets Forestry (Chernivtsi region, Ukraine), where they will participate in a program of reintroduction this species into the wild. Also, on November 27, 2019, as part of the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP), our zoo sent their another son, a male Mustang born in 2018, to Tbilisi Zoo (Georgia). All offspring obtained in Mykolaiv Zoo are transferred for maintenance to other zoos under the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP) in accordance with all recommendations and advice of EAZA zoological consultant Douglas Richardson.
Bison are the largest and heaviest animals in Europe. They disappeared in the wild in the early twentieth century and remained only in zoos. In the Red List, their status is "lost in nature." In 1923, the International Bison Society was established in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, that found 53 individuals in captivity. They became the ancestors of all modern bison of the Bialowieza subspecies, i.e. those that live in our country again in nature. Today, about 200 bison live in Ukraine. Some populations have survived in Volyn, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Sumy and the Carpathians.
It is interesting that the first pair of bison was brought to our zoo in August 1980. And since 1983 they brought another couple and this couple was the first to give birth and gave birth to 11 calves. And for all history of keeping and breeding the bison in Mykolaiv Zoo 15 calves were born.
Mykolaiv Zoo is keeping these powerful bulls, providing good conditions of the maintenance, carrying out educational work and, the main thing, breeding them.
So, visit our zoo to see them for yourself!