Tomasz talked a lot about bison as we drove between various wildflower meadows in Bialowieza in eastern Poland in June. ‘We can go no closer than 50 metres,’ he said. ‘Cross that line and they will charge. Even 50 metres can be too close. You need to let them see you approach or that will upset them too.’
I’d dreamed of seeing free-ranging European bison since my nerdish wildlife-obsessed childhood. Now we’d come to their habitat but the light was fading and with it my hope of seeing them. Then, at the last meadow, Tomasz said, ‘We have bison!’ Even our undemonstrative guide seemed excited.
It was getting on for 10pm. We piled out of the mini-bus, and scared a nightjar up off the ground. Tomasz had his binoculars trained across the meadow on a huge dark form. The half-light made it look gigantic, more like a rocky outcrop than any living thing. At first I’d presumed that the bison was on the other side of the rock but didn’t pause to check with my binoculars. Tomasz had already set off across the meadow at an impressive pace and I was determined to keep up with him. Dew-covered meadow grasses and flowers were up to my neck. The ground was tusocky and uneven. All my concentration was on keeping close to our naturalist and on making it across the meadow. I’d soon lost sight of our quarry as I rushed on. I had no idea how close we might be to the bison.
We descend into a dip, where the plants were over my head, and then we began climbing. The long grasses even hid us from each other. I could hear Simon and the others behind me and knew Tomasz was a few paces ahead. I was following his trail of trampled grasses. Surely we were in danger of getting too close to the bison and spooking it? Then we’d be charged by a ton of angry testosterone-fuelled muscle. So far, though, all was quiet up ahead. Soon we were up on a piece of raised ground close to a copse of silver birch trees. The grass was shorter here. I looked across a slight dip to the unmistakable profile of a massive bison, less than 100 metres away. Its undercarriage announced this was bull. His skinny buttocks and bulky neck and shoulders made him look front-loaded, like a JCB. He was clearly one of the biggest bulls, nearly 2m at the shoulder. He was absorbed in grazing and didn’t look up as we edged closer. Slowly though, as the light failed completely, he wandered in amongst some trees and we lost sight of him, leaving us celebrating and happy – if wet.
We were up again at 3.30am chasing around various likely meadows until we struck lucky again. Rain was tipping down. Approaching several dark forms through rain-soaked meadow grasses, we quickly became sodden but I didn’t care. My enthusiasm made me feel waterproof. I had four browsing individuals in my steamed up bins, all bulls. The cows stay in dense forest during the summer where the calves are safest.
‘It that the alpha male?’I asked Tomasz.
‘No, he is just bigger, older. Bison reach adultery at four or five and maximum size at five or six.’
I watched mesmerised, vaguely aware of rain dribbling in through the neck of my jacket, as the foursome slowly grazed their way back into the forest where they’d spend the day. We’d only just got there in time. I was elated. I’d seen my bison roaming free.
For many hundreds of years the European bison was protected as a high status game animal. Kings and Tsars liked to hunt it but turmoil beginning at the end of the nineteen century left poor people hungry enough to poach these animals. They were extinct in the wild by the end of the First World War. In 1923, though, the deputy director of the state zoo in Warsaw suggested a breeding programme based on European bison that survived in captivity. In 1929 twelve animals were brought together and a captive breeding centre set up. The first bison were released into the wild in 1952 and the species is recovering. There are now 546 roaming the Polish part of the Bialowieza primeval forest, with other herds in the nearby Knyszyn forest and across the border in Belarus. It is a great conservation success story.


 

author with life-sized model of a bison; photos by Simon Howarth

 

There are plenty of opportunities to celebrate with bison-themed drinks; bison grass vodka is another alternative