The space would be a large area of a nature reserve with fences around it to ensure the animals cannot roam around the floodplain – essentially a “halfway house”. <\/p>\n
She added: “Ultimately, we would hope to see wild elk roaming throughout the floodplains of Britain, starting with the Trent and Idle. But that’s some way off.” <\/p>\n
Ms Bradley is also part of a project that saw beavers return to the county in 2021 for the first time in at least 400 years. <\/p>\n
Like elk, beavers are herbivores and have brought “great benefit” to the local environment, according to the conservation expert. <\/p>\n
“We’ve already seen from our enclosed beavers, that the increase in species richness that they create in the habitats where they are, is just phenomenal,” she said. <\/p>\n
The next steps toward introducing elk include considering any identified risks, engaging with the public and landowners, and ensuring there is a suitable enclosure. <\/p>\n
“Like all these things, it’s down to funding,” Ms Bradley said. <\/p>\n
“The technical elements won’t be the hold-up, it’ll be the funding available for those logistics.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The space would be a large area of a nature reserve with fences around it to ensure the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-217788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}