10 Jan 2013 Reviving Europe’s Biodiversity By Importing Exotic
Animals Scientists are conducting intriguing — and
counterintuitive — experiments at several sites in Germany:
Bringing back long-lost herbivores, such as water buffalo, to
encourage the spread of native plants that have fared poorly in
Europe’s human-dominated landscape. With its tiny houses nestled
along the main road and its red-brick church, Töpchin — just 25
miles outside of Berlin — is a traditional-looking Brandenburg
village. But heading east through the marshland that borders the
village, a visitor encounters the unexpected: five huge Asian
water buffaloes. The species was native to Europe until 10,000
years ago, when hunting shrunk its range to the continent’s far
southeast. So Germans know these beasts only from pictures of
them in fields and rice paddies in Asia. “Some people are really
confused when they see the water buffaloes,” says Holger
Rössling, the man who set the animals free in Töpchin in the
summer of 2011. But the black cre