Flowers pop up at a defunct military base in Milovice, Czech Republic. What’s so amazing about that? Just a few years ago, the area was clogged with tall, dense invasive grasses. Czechs have some monstrously heavy animals to thank for this newly flourishing ecosystem—including a novel cattle breed called tauros.
The tauros were brought in from the Netherlands, where scientists are trying to make a new version of an old animal called the auroch. The auroch was a ferocious super cow with long, lean legs and deadly horns. It roamed much of Europe until it became extinct in 1627. People can’t remake a creature God created, of course. But they can breed an animal to fill a need. Now they’re combining old cow types that look and act like aurochs in hopes of breeding a bovine with genes similar to the auroch’s. These researchers hope the new cows—tauros—will take over the land-clearing job done by aurochs until overhunting wiped them out.
God designed human bodies to heal, and He designed land to heal too. Animals can help land powerfully regenerate, returning balance after damage is done.
“It’s a miraculous change,” says Dalibor Dostal, the director of the organization European Wildlife. He says nobody expected the Czech land to renew so much so fast. Within two years of grazing, flowers sprouted. Now seasonal flowers change the color of the whole area over the course of the year, and precious life has reappeared—including the rare blue star gentian flower and the Adonis blue, a butterfly not spotted there since 1967.
Conservationists decided cutting the grass down with machines would cost too much, and ordinary domestic animals such as sheep would eat threatened native species as well as invaders. So conservationists formed the dream team: wild horses, which consider invasive grasses a delicacy, and European bison and tauros, which love to chow down on bushes. The project now has herds of 27 European bison, 25 tauros, and some 70 wild horses. The animals move freely on the pastures year-round.
And the good is spreading. This year, conservationists hope to make the sanctuary bigger, planning an eventual span of 890 acres.
And He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” — Revelation 21:5
