COWS COME HOME

Tauros are the closest thing to the extinct aurochs. And they are coming to the UK.

- JAMES FAIR

IN 2022, A FILM CREW working on the Lika Plains near the Adriatic coast of Croatia picked up some remarkable behaviour. A small herd of aurochs had been released into the area a few years earlier, and thermal-imaging video footage showed the bulls responding to the threat of a pack of wolves by forming a semi-circle and facing outwards with their fearsome horns to the front.

Cows and calves sheltered behind this defensive shield, along with a group of wild horses, including a foal. 

Ronald Goderie, a Dutch ecologist who has been closely involved in the European rewilding movement for four decades, says there is historical evidence of aurochs protecting themselves in this way, and of other species taking advantage of it. “That’s what we had heard, but it had never been filmed,” he adds. “It’s a semi-circle with cows and wild horses behind it, and the wolves outside showing a lot of aggression.”

The footage demonstrated how the release of the aurochs into this part of Croatia was beginning to recreate interactions between megafauna that have not been seen in Europe for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It showed just how far rewilding has come in the past two or three decades. And it revealed that aurochs – a species whose last surviving individual died in 1627 – were playing their part in creating this new, wilder continent.

These same animals could be coming here to the UK – to the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, to be precise. And while they’re not going to be hunted by wolves, it will be intriguing to see how they behave and what impact they have when they arrive.