Three bison killed in Poland after being hit by train called “Bison”

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Three of Poland’s iconic bison have been killed after being hit by a train – which, in a sad irony, was called Żubr, the Polish word for bison.

The train was travelling between Białystok, a city in northeastern Poland, and the capital Warsaw on Sunday morning when it ran into a herd of bison near the town of Witowo, close to Białowieża Forest, which is home to the country’s largest bison population

“Unfortunately, the animals did not survive,” a local police spokesman told the Polish Press Agency (PAP). But the 52 passengers on board and three crew members were unharmed, reports the Wirtualna Polska website.

The train was delayed for over two hours as firefighters, assisted by staff from the nearby forestry authorities and Białowieża National Park, removed the dead animals from the track.

Poland is home to the world’s largest population of European bison, also known as wisent, the heaviest wild land animal in Europe, with adults weighing up to 900 kg.

A century ago, bison had been hunted to extinction in Poland. But a successful reintroduction programme has seen their numbers swell to around 3,000, including over 2,800 living in the wild. In 2021, they were reclassified as no longer “vulnerable”.

As numbers have expanded, reports indicate that bison are increasingly venturing into areas where they are more likely to come into contact with humans.

In 2023, the media reported several cases of bison being killed in collisions with army vehicles. Last year, the Polish armed forces said they had reduced such incidents using an app that tracks the animals’ movements.

The annual winter census of bison for this year revealed a population of almost 1,200 bison in the Polish part of the Białowieża Forest, a rise on last year’s figure.

Piotr Sienkiewicz, a lieutenant at the local fire department, told Wirtualna Polska that the animals are often seen in the area where they were hit by the train, sometimes wandering onto roads and less frequently onto rail lines.

Local farmers have also recently pointed to an increasing problem with bison straying outside of the forest and eating their crops. They have demanded action from the climate ministry.

“Białowieża Forest is too small for the bison population that is there now,” Hubert Ojdana told agriculture website Farmer.pl. “According to scientists’ calculations… the forest should support [only] 400 bison…As they don’t fit inside the forest, they start to come out onto farmers’ fields.”

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Wikimedia/Charles J. Sharp (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator, lecturer, and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.