A hunter has admitted killing one bison – a protected species in Poland – and is suspected of killing another after saying that he mistook them for boars. The death of the animals – an iconic symbol of Polish nature – has dismayed conservationists.
The incident took place at the Drawsko military training area near the town of Pomierzyn in northwestern Poland. The hunter, who reported the case himself to police, admitted shooting one female bison, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reports.
He explained that he mistook the bison for a wild boar, said Tomasz Zygmunt, a spokesman for the military police in Szczecin, which took over the case from local police. “He confessed to everything…He knows what he did was wrong,” Zygmunt added.
On Wednesday, members of a local nature group were informed of a second dead bison close to where the first was found. “The animal was most likely shot on the same occasion, because the hunter had fired off his entire clip of rounds,” said Maciej Tracz, a conservationist.
Szok! Dwa żubry zabite na polowaniu – alarmuje Zachodniopomorskie Towarzystwo Przyrodnicze. Myśliwy tłumaczy się, że pomylił je ze stadem dzików: https://t.co/5Ptolk5lJ8
1/2 pic.twitter.com/8E1Gdjg0rE— Nasze Lasy (@Nasze_Lasy) October 13, 2022
The second animal, also a female, had been in excellent condition and had given birth this year. It is not known what happened to her several-month-old calf, added Tracz, cited by local news outlet GK24.
Tracz said several bison in the broader region that have gone missing recently “probably ended up, brutally speaking, inside a sausage. There are no wild boar [here], few deer, but certain people are determined to hunt something down”.
The authorities are gathering evidence, including investigating if the hunter was also involved in the killing of the second bison, and whether he is guilty of “causing damage to the animal world”, a crime that can carry a prison sentence of up to two years, reports PAP.
The European bison, which is the continent’s largest land mammal, was hunted to extinction in Poland in the early 20th century, surviving only in captivity. But the species has been successfully reintroduced in the wild in recent decades and is under legal protection.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the population of European bison has more than tripled in the last 20 years, from around 1,800 in 2003 to over 6,200 in 2019. There are 47 free-ranging herds in Europe, mainly in Poland, Belarus and Russia.
The animals have, however, again become a tempting target for some hunters. A report by Greenpeace in 2017 showed that Polish and international hunters pay up to 12,000 zloty (€2,480) for organised bison hunts – which are able to take place legally if they are part of limited culls – and up to 36,000 zloty for a stuffed trophy.
Last year, a village mayor in Poland was accused of poaching a bison and seeking to sell its head as a trophy, then giving false statements in an attempt to cover up his crime. In an echo of the latest case, the mayor had reportedly claimed he believed the animal to have been a wild boar.
Main image credit: Zachodniopomorskie Towarzystwo Przyrodnicze
Peter Kononczuk is senior editor at Notes from Poland. He was previously a journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in London and Warsaw.
