Polish naturalists saved European bison from extinction, research reveals

LAWRENCE — Most people might be surprised to learn that bison are not exclusively found in North America. But as much as the American breed of the large bovine has become a metaphor for callous annihilation and loss, the European breed has experienced an equally volatile saga.

“So many people don’t know that there are European bison, and their near-extinction and restoration story, in some respects, is maybe even starker than that of the American bison,” said Nathan Wood, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.

Wood’s new article, titled “Returning ‘Our Royal Animal’ to its ‘Fatherland’: The Near-extinction and Restoration of Bison in Poland after World War I,” reveals this history. He traces how after soldiers and poachers killed the last free European bison, Polish naturalists worked with international organizations to revive the species from the few animals scattered on estates and zoos across the continent. The article appears in Slavic Review.

“We have these images of the carcasses on the Great Plains of America, with bison getting shot from railway cars and stacks of skulls, and we connect it with ‘taming the West’ and driving out the Plains Indians. But the European bison story is also quite amazing. All living Białowieża bison, which are the lowland ones of today, descend from just seven animals. Now there are more than 1,000 in Białowieża and 10 times that many overall,” Wood said.

In some ways, he said, bison became a metaphor for Poland itself.

“I wondered, ‘What were Polish patriots thinking when trying to bring back a species from extinction, when they thought of their state as something that had been extinct and brought back to life?” he asked.

“They referred to the bison as ‘the royal beast,’ hearkening to the Polish kings that had hunted them. They referred to Białowieża primeval forest as the fatherland. And they referred to Poland as the fatherland, often with a capital F. The resonances of this metonymic relationship were pretty clear for me.”

Wood emphasized he is not a large animal biologist, so his contributions to the history of the European bison are based on a pair of conceptual rather than clinical revelations.

“I’ve delved into the Polish perspective. What were the people involved in those first two decades of bison restoration in Poland thinking about what they did, and how did they think about the animals they were trying to save?” he said.

“The other thing is this parallel between the way that Poles at the time had a ‘civilizing’ mission for the East and how they were trying to civilize the forest and the bison. Other scholarship on European bison restoration has not made this connection.”

He said big-city cultural workers for the state were attempting to educate the people in that region because of the assumption they couldn’t be trusted. They predicted the inhabitants — those in the rural east and the people, many of whom would now be considered Belarusians — would poach these animals again, and so it might be too dangerous to reintroduce bison into the forest.

Among the most surprising details Wood writes about was a scandal that occurred in 1931. That year, news broke that Prince Hochberg of Pszczyna had permitted Margrave Alfred Wielopolski to shoot two bison on his estate, which threatened to derail the gains Polish authorities had made in reestablishing the animals.

“Here the state is hoping to project this image of themselves as, ‘We are civilized, we’re modern, we’re restoring this species.’ And then this prince allows a margrave to come to his estate and pop off two infertile bison. The optics were crazy,” Wood said.

Now in his 21st year at KU, Wood specializes in Eastern European history and often teaches courses on World War I. He is on the board of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. Wood has lived in Poland numerous times since his early 20s. The professor said he’s spent almost a 10th of his life in the country.

“Decades from now, I think there will be more bison in Poland and more in other parts of Europe, too, thanks to contemporary ‘re-wilding’ efforts,” he said.

“But conservation projects are always a product of their time. Even if you have the most reputable scientists of the day trying to be involved in the work, you always have to deal with human culture, context, politics and war … or a prince who still sees bison as his property.”