The 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species designated the European bison as endangered. However, since the 20th century, active conservation programmes have been carried out for European bison to be artificially bred and wildly released, and the number of European bison began to rise in 2000, and iUCN designated European bison as a near-threatened species in 2008. However, the population of some European bison colonies is still declining and is not out of endangerment. Ongoing conservation efforts are particularly important for the survival of European bison.
In 1923, the first International Congress for the Conservation of European Bison (EBPB) was held in Paris, and in 1932 a genealogy was created for the existing European bison, and all bison were archived and registered. The bison population has been growing since 1946. In 1951, European bison began to be released back into nature. By 1960, bison herds were reproduced in the Forest of Alovica in eastern Poland. They are mostly found in some game reserves such as the Western Caucasus, Russia, Poland and Belarus. Most of the herds are found in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Kyrgyzstan. There are also many European bison in zoos distributed in 30 countries, about 3200 in 2000, all of which are the offspring of 12 bison, and their health is not optimistic due to genetic limitations.
