Animals listed in the Red Book. Bison: Red Data Book of Russia. Caucasian bison: pages of history How bison returned to the Caucasian reserve kubanovedenie

For the staff of the Teberda Nature Reserve, winter is the time of counting its inhabitants, including such rare animals as mountain bison that almost disappeared in the 90s. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of local rangers, ecologists and scientists, the situation has changed and there are so many bison that even ordinary tourists can now meet them.

It is reliably known that until the beginning of the twentieth century, bison lived at the foot of Elbrus, as well as in the forests of Big Laba. Alas, in the 20s of the last century the bison disappeared from the North Caucasus. According to legend, the last bison were killed on Mount Alous, three years after the creation of the Caucasian Nature Reserve, says local historian and photographer Andrei Pinkin.

However, then it was decided to restore the population of rare animals. A year before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, 13 bison from Belovezhskaya Pushcha, three steppe bison and one male Caucasian bison, which miraculously survived in the Hamburg zoo, were brought to the Kish cordon.

These animals became the founders of the modern population of mountain bison. They safely survived the war, and soon their offspring began to settle in other parts of the region. In the fall of 1968, the first 14 bison appeared in the Teberda Nature Reserve. By the beginning of the 90s, there were already 1,300 animals in the KCR, Adygea and Krasnodar Territory. Their phenotype was clearly different from the steppe and Bialowieza bison. The animals were perfectly adapted for life in the mountains.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mountain bison population almost disappeared again. Poachers barbarously destroyed rare animals. In addition, breeding work practically stopped and bison began to degenerate: their offspring became weaker, the cubs died before reaching sexual maturity. As a result, fewer than 200 individuals remained in the entire North Caucasus.

During this period, mountain bison underwent an unexpected adaptation - they began to winter in hard-to-reach meadows. Dry alpine grass is almost always open on slopes and blows. These places are protected from predators and poachers by a belt with an almost insurmountable amount of snow. From cold weather, judging by observations, bison do not suffer at all.

In addition, six years ago, another 18 bison were brought to the territory of the reserve from the Moscow region and the Ryazan region. Since wintering in the mountains is a serious test for ungulates, it was decided to organize feeding stations for bison. We feed them with hay and compound feed. The animals quickly got used to it and even stopped being afraid of scientists and veterinarians who monitored them, ”Yuri Sarkisyan, deputy of the Teberda Museum, told the" RG "correspondent.

As a result, winter feeding of animals made it possible to ensure the successful adaptation of bison to the harsh conditions of the reserve, which had a positive effect on animal reproduction. Now 54 bison live in the vicinity of Teberda and Arkhyz. Many of them migrate outside the reserve. One can even say that mountain bison were born anew in the Caucasus - for the third time.

By the way

In December last year, 17 bison arrived from Sweden to Russia. First, they will have to undergo quarantine in the nursery of the Oksky Nature Reserve near Moscow. Here the animals will be divided into family groups and placed in spacious open-air cages: they are as close as possible in terms of habitat to wild nature, but at the same time they allow observing animals and carrying out the necessary veterinary procedures. After that, they will go to the Turmon Wildlife Refuge to form a new, free group - already the second on the territory of North Ossetia.

Most recently, in the 34th issue of our newspaper, we talked about the history of the restoration of the European bison, about the problems that scientists face in the process of difficult work to save this species. However, this story would be incomplete without a story about efforts to restore another subspecies of bison - mountain, or Caucasian, which was completely exterminated in nature in 1927. *

The civilized world learned about the existence of Caucasian bison only in the 19th century. Their rarity and complete lack of study attracted the attention of many researchers in Europe and Russia.

Historical information about the distribution of the Caucasian bison is extremely fragmentary. In the description of the hunting of Abala Khan in Aran (1276) and Gazan Khan in Talysh (1302), among other killed game, “mountain buffaloes” are mentioned. Rumors about wild bulls living in the Talysh mountains in the Transcaucasus existed as far back as the 19th century. Perhaps the bison became extinct there in the 18th-19th centuries.

The fact that bison lived on the now treeless plain and in the mountains of the Central Ciscaucasia is evidenced by the collections of skulls of these giants collected in Ossetian sanctuaries - dzuars (XVIII-XIX centuries). In the Ciscaucasia, bison were quite widespread, and their range here combined with the range of the Don populations of the European bison.

A group of hunters. In the center - Grand Duke Sergiy Mikhailovich

In the basin of the Lower Don, bison were exterminated, as you already know, by the beginning of the 18th century, but they survived in the forests of the foothills and the northern slope of the Main Caucasian Range - from Abkhazia in the west to the Urukh River in North Ossetia in the East. After the end of the Caucasian War in 1864, the settlement of the Trans-Kuban region by settlers began, especially in the 1880s. The settlers began to actively clear forests and beat the beast. In addition, foot-and-mouth disease was introduced into the bison habitat, and hundreds of animals began to die. As a result, the territory of the Grand Duke Kuban hunting became the only refuge of bison in the Caucasus. It was organized in 1888 by Grand Dukes Pyotr Nikolaevich and Georgy Mikhailovich Romanov, who received the right to hunt on an area of \u200b\u200babout 522 thousand hectares in the forest dachas of the Ministry of State Property and the Kuban Regional Military Administration. The boundaries of the leased site ran along the Main Caucasian Range in the south, along the Bolshaya Laba River in the east, along the Belaya River (in Adygea) in the West. The place was chosen by a connoisseur, the former manager of hunting in the Caucasus, Franz Iosifovich Kratkiy. In 1892, the right to use these lands was acquired by the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, who later was simply delighted with hunting on this land and with the beauty of the richest nature of the Caucasus. Unfortunately, in 1909 the lease term expired, the protection of the territory ceased, and the bison began to be actively exterminated again. By 1917, their number did not exceed 500, and by the beginning of the 1920s. - 50 heads.

In December 1920, the Kuban-Chernomorsky Revolutionary Committee published a decree "On the Kuban High-Mountain Reserve", created with the aim of protecting bison. However, the official existence of the reserve, called the Caucasian Bison (now the Caucasian State Natural Biosphere Reserve, the territory of which is included in the UNESCO World Natural Heritage List) was confirmed by decree only in May 1924.But the bison continued to be exterminated even after the establishment of the reserve. The last three animals were killed by poachers in 1927 on Mount Alous.

In 1940, 5 bison were brought to the Caucasian reserve from the Askania-Nova steppe reserve, where since the 19th century. work was carried out on the acclimatization, hybridization and artificial insemination of a number of domestic and wild animals, including bison. But bison, accustomed to forests, were not adapted to life in the steppe areas of Askania-Nova. They lacked shelter from the sun, the necessary habitual branch feed. I had to cross them with American bison - a genetically close species, but adapted to life in open grassy areas. By the end of the 1930s. the number of Askanian bison reached 60 heads.

One male and four females were sent to the Caucasian Reserve. All of them had an admixture of the blood of the only surviving bull of the Caucasian subspecies (the same one that took part in the restoration of the Belovezhsky herd). The animals were placed in a large open-air cage of the Chisinau Bison Park, located at an altitude of 1400 m above sea level. The forest here is represented by broad-leaved species, among which there are also wild fruit trees. In addition, the park had many meadows covered with a variety of herbaceous vegetation. All this made it favorable for the habitation of bison, both in summer and in winter.

In 1949, male bison of the Caucasian-Belovezhskaya line were brought to the Caucasian Reserve, and local females began to interbreed only with them, while males mixed with buffalo blood were practically eliminated from reproduction. Also, since 1949, animals began to be driven to high-mountain pastures. Later, they began to carry out such migrations on their own.

In 1951-1953. the second bison park was created - in the Umpyr tract on the Malaya Laba river. The staff of the Caucasian Reserve drove part of the herd here. In the first year, the animals returned to the reserve, but the next year 18 animals remained to winter in the new bison park. In 1959, four more bison of the Caucasian-Belovezhskaya line, obtained from the Bialowieza bison nursery, were added to them.

Beginning in 1954, the bison of the Caucasian Reserve began to be transferred to free content. In 1959-1960. they were no longer fed during the winter period (although mineral feeding was continued). By this time, the size of the Caucasian population reached 185 heads (96 males and 89 females). As shown by calculations made on the basis of pedigrees, the proportion of bison blood in these animals dropped to 6.4%. In the future, this value should have decreased by itself, without additional efforts on the part of humans and the introduction of new animals into the population of the Caucasian-Belovezhskaya line. However, it will no longer be possible to trace this process by analyzing crossbreeding in the herd, since since 1960 the breeding records were stopped.

In the 1980s. the herd of Caucasian bison numbered about 1400 heads - this was the heyday. But later, due to the increased poaching in the context of political turmoil, the number of animals sharply decreased again.

There are now four populations of bison in the Caucasus. One of them, the largest, inhabits the Caucasian Reserve, we have just told its story. Three others - in the North Ossetian and Teberda state reserves and in the Nalchik state forestry hunting enterprise in Kabardino-Balkaria, were created with the help of animals from the Caucasian-Belovezhskaya line and bison from the Caucasian reserve. According to the latest data, the number of each of these three populations does not exceed 10-15 heads.

At one time in the Caucasus, three more populations of bison were created in the Assinsky, Sunzhensky and Ismayilli reserves. Unfortunately, by the end of the 1990s, these populations were completely exterminated.

Based on materials: A.S. Nemtsev and others. "Bison in the Caucasus". - Moscow-Maykop, 2003.

* In Russian, the name "European bison" means animals of the main subspecies - Bison bonasus bonasus, in contrast to the "Caucasian bison" - subspecies Bison bonasus caucasicus... Recently, however, one can often come across the use of the phrase "European bison" "in the English manner" - in relation to the bison in general. In English, the expression "European bison" really means a bison as a species ( Bison bonasus), in contrast to the "American bison", "American bison", i.e. bison ( Bison bison). However, the transfer of this tradition into our literature leads to confusion.

Mutaha and other Mumu

The safe return of the "prodigal sons" - four-year-old bison, wandering through the forests near Moscow for almost 10 days, took place the other day in the Prioksko-Terrasny reserve of the Serpukhov region. The ungulates that escaped on July 11 after the fall of the fence were discovered by the specialists of the reserve… 30 kilometers from their native nursery. To return the fugitives home, experts carried out a whole special operation involving small aircraft. There were also psychological tricks and aphrodisiacs that scientists had to use, so that animals, without unnecessary anxiety and fear, at their own request, and not by clicking a whip, followed in the direction in which the reserve is located.

The background to this incredible adventure is as follows. Mass escape of ungulates occurred after another July bad weather. The stormy wind poured three spruces and four pines onto the fence of the enclosure. Under this weight, the metal structure, reaching a length of 20 meters, collapsed. A whole herd of young animals - 9 heifers and 3 bulls - which grazed on twenty hectares of fenced land, did not waste time and escaped to freedom. Although a paradox! The bison were already sure that they were living in freedom - they were hardly aware of the boundaries of their possessions. And the fence was for them more an element of the landscape than some kind of limitation. Nevertheless, as soon as this element fell, the horizon line was even farther away, and the animals, driven either by an internal instinct, or by thunderclaps, rushed into the thick of the forest.

As soon as the loss was discovered, 20 volunteers went in search of the disappeared livestock. The first day they were looking for animals within a radius of 15 kilometers from the reserve, but they were gone. More precisely, the traces were washed away by the rain. Then the head of the administration ordered to involve small aircraft in the search, and soon a sports plane and several hang gliders went to look for the fugitives.

According to Irina Zemlyanko, head of the central bison nursery, this teenage group of bison was just being prepared to be sent to the Smolensk National Park, where they had to get into their natural habitat and practically forget about what a person looks like. They were specially grown in the wild, limiting contact with the staff of the reserve and visitors as much as possible, therefore, being alone in the forest, they should have felt themselves not as its owners, but rather as guests. After all, this youngster is afraid of any rustle. The reserve's specialists tried to warn local residents through all possible means of communication: if someone in the forest accidentally meets a bison, there is no need to panic, run away or throw stones and sticks at it. Seeing a person, the bison will try to hide itself immediately.

By the way, in the 69 years of the existence of the reserve, such an emergency related to the riot of the natural elements happened for the first time. Probably endless rains washed away the root system of pines and spruces, and a strong wind shook their trunks, therefore, falling on a completely stable fence, the trees broke it with their huge weight. By the way, the fine for killing a bison is 500 thousand rubles, so the district administration warned the population of the Serpukhov region: if there are hunters to profit from bison meat, they will not avoid retribution and criminal liability.

The fugitives were discovered four days after their disappearance. However, the reserve workers did not drive them back home like a herd of cows. The animals were treated with care, because they were born to live in freedom and should feel like a part of the wild. They should not see or hear any whip, shepherd, heavy equipment and domestic animals. Therefore, scientists resorted to several tricks: first they arranged a corral, and then they threw a treat for the animals.

At first, we walked in a chain in their direction, but the bison walked around it and returned to their original place - to the meadow, where there is a lot of tasty grass, - said Irina Zemlyanko. “The next day they were gone. We started looking for the trail. They poured food on the glades to lure the bison, but the wind blew in the other direction, and they did not smell this feeding. And then we finally found them and, lining up with the letter P, went to drive them. There were three kilometers between us and the animals. So that they ran to the reserve, we yelled, giggled, whistled. Who is in that much. Unless they sang songs.

And after the corral of the bison, it was decided to leave alone for some time, - the volunteers who participated in the search told MK. - It was noticed that they stood on the very path along which they left the nursery, and there is a great hope that they will move along it back to their usual calm places. Inspectors and bison guards cleared the glades heaped with trees after the hurricane to make it easier for the animals to walk, and finally the bison crossed the border of the Prioksko-Terrasny reserve, returning to the strictly protected area. Here no one will touch or offend them.

We were very worried about them, so every day about seven people watched the bison, - comments Zemlyanko.

In this whole story, there were three "why": why on the whole calm, if not sedentary animals literally rushed out of the enclosure as soon as the fence collapsed? After all, the area of \u200b\u200btheir habitat was more than two hectares - and in this environment they did not feel like prisoners. Why did they get lost? After all, the natural navigator, which every wild animal has, had to tell the hoofed animals the way home. And finally, why did it take so long to come back? Scientists found them on July 13th. And the operation to return them home ended only on the 20th.

According to the staff of the reserve, those who fled from the Prioksko-Terrasny reserve left the enclosure not because of the fall of the fence, but because of ... the barking of hunting dogs.

They know all the rustles, - said Irina Zemlyanko. - If, for example, a wild boar, deer or elk are nearby, they lie and do not twitch. But if the bison hear a man or the barking of hunting dogs, they will jump up and rush. So they ran away. Why did they go so far? Eyewitnesses called me and said that at the moment when they fled, they heard barking in that place. The dogs have driven them! We flew like crazy as much as 20 kilometers! And then from a gallop they switched to a calm step.

In all likelihood, the deserters were in no hurry to go home because they were not hungry. The fugitives had a large food base at their side: flooded meadows, and even a whole lake. Plus the ability to move freely. So they cannot be called lost. They just became even freer and even wilder.

By the way, bison researchers all over the world have great views of this herd. “Each of them is a potential parent. It took 3.5 years and a lot of money to grow each one, ”Zemlyanko noted. According to the tradition established in the Prioksko-Terrasny Nature Reserve, the names of all bison born here begin with the syllable Mu ... But what are the names of the desperate fugitives: Mutakha, Muger, Muktyabrina, Muzhik, Mufassa, Musvet, Mulesya, Murzik, Murcello, Murka, Mumusha, Murvana. Remember these names! Perhaps we will hear them more than once ...

REFERENCE "MK"

In the 20s of the XX century, the bison was endangered. The last wild Caucasian bison were shot in the Western Caucasus in 1926, and the last representative of the lowland line in the wild was killed in 1921 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. All today's bison descend from twelve individuals that were at the beginning of the 20th century in zoos and reserves. Low genetic variability is one of the main threats to the long-term conservation of the species. Thanks to efforts to preserve it on the part of zoos and private individuals, in 1952 it became possible to re-settle the first free herds of bison in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. In 2013, there were 5249 individuals in the world, of which 1623 animals lived in captivity.

BTW

According to the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation, Sergei Donskoy, everything is in order with bison in the Moscow region and Central Russia. “The population of these unique animals in the wild is already approaching 500 individuals. At this rate, by 2020, bison will freely walk in the forests near Moscow, without surprising anyone, "Donskoy wrote on the social network.

The European bison is the only wild bull in Europe that has survived to this day. For most of the peoples of the Caucasus, the bison served not only as an object of hunting, but also personified the forces of nature, had a traditional cult value, it was worshiped as one of the symbols of the native land. The bison is an integral part of the ecosystems of the deciduous forests of the Caucasus, which forms the landscape characteristic of the region. The restoration of natural populations of bison is one of the prerequisites for the restoration of natural forests.

The disappearance of the bison in nature was caused by anthropogenic reasons: the destruction of habitats (deforestation and burning of forests, the transformation of forests into agricultural lands) and unlimited hunting. The last wild populations of the species were destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century. It took about 70 years of breeding - first in zoos and nurseries, and then in nature - in order to increase the number of the world herd from 52 animals (1927) to 3418 individuals (1993).

Russian specialists began to restore the bison destroyed in the country in the late 1940s. In Russia, two nurseries for breeding bison were created (in the Prioksko-Terrasny and Oksky reserves), which reflects the history of the creation of nurseries. By 1991, on the territory of the USSR, there were already 24 freely living groups of bison with a total number of about 1,500 individuals, of which 569 were on the territory of Russia. Due to the practically uncontrolled poaching in the 1990s, caused by the collapse of nature protection services, by 1998 the number of free-living bison in Russia had declined almost threefold - to 185 individuals.

The state of the bison population served as the basis for its inclusion in the Red Book of the Russian Federation, where it is classified as category 1 - endangered species.

© Alexey Bock

© WWF Russia

© Victor Lukarevsky

© Vyacheslav Moroz

© Vyacheslav Moroz

© Vyacheslav Moroz

© Roman Mnatsekanov

What are we doing for the bison?

At the initiative of WWF-Russia in the late 1990s, the Strategy for the Conservation of Bison in Russia was developed. The strategy provided for the creation of several large groups of animals, 500–1000 individuals in each, with the restoration of the natural population structure, and identified priority areas for reintroduction, including the Caucasus.

In 2009 WWF Russia started practical actions to restore natural populations of bison in the North Caucasus. In 2011, OJSC "Resorts of the North Caucasus" and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of nature protection in the North Caucasus. This agreement also allowed for the importation and release of bison in 2012 and 2013. The coverage of the bison release activities drew international attention to the problem of restoring their population.

Difficult wintering conditions and the small number of the Arkhyz group of bison, for the preservation of which the fate of each animal is of particular importance, required the implementation of biotechnical measures related to feeding the animals in the winter. Members of the WWF Golden Panda Club and Center-Soya LLC provided enormous assistance in this. The breeding efficiency of animals depends on their physiological state; therefore, feeding bison in winter contributed to the rapid growth of the group.

During this time, 46 bison were brought to the region from nurseries in Russia. Currently, there are three groups of purebred bison in the Caucasus. Two live on the territory of North Ossetia: in the Tseysky and Turmon reserves, the third - on the Arkhyz section of the Teberdinsky reserve in Karachay-Cherkessia.

Thus, the total number of purebred bison in the North Caucasus, thanks to the measures taken to preserve the existing groups, reaches 130 individuals.

On June 29, 1940, 5 bison were delivered from Askania-Nova by rail to the Khadzhokh station located in the foothills of the North-Western Caucasus. These animals became the basis of the largest and oldest population in the world, which developed the mountain-forest lands of the western Caucasus.

The history of this truly royal beast was closely connected with the history of many top officials in Europe, and it was especially closely intertwined with the uneasy Russian-German relations in the twentieth century. And numerous political collisions of those years directly affected the fate and life of these animals.

The discovery of the bison in the Caucasus and its extermination

In early historical times, bison inhabited almost all of Europe, and it was most numerous on the plain between the Carpathian and Caucasian mountains, where at that time there were no obstacles for them, and they freely contacted. Due to the direct extermination and displacement of them from the lands, more and more occupied by agriculture, the range of bison was reduced and divided into isolated areas.

By the end of the 18th century, these animals, which had disappeared in most of the range, were able to survive only due to the fact that unprecedented measures for the time were taken in Russia to preserve and increase these unique animals - both in the Western Caucasus and in belovezhskie forests.

The first undoubted proof of the existence of these animals in the Caucasus was presented by Academician Guldenstedt in 1770. He reported about bison turtles in the caves of Ossetia, where they were brought as objects of sacrifice. But the researcher did not find live bison in these places. And only in 1836 the skin of the Caucasian bison was sent to the Russian Academy of Sciences by Baron Rosen, who was at that time the corps commander in the Caucasus. This skin was transferred to the hands of Academician Baer, \u200b\u200bwho, having compared it with the skins of the Bialowieza bison, came to the conclusion that these animals are identical.

Caucasian bison. Photo of the 19th century E.K. Yutner. This is the only lifetime photograph of a Caucasian bison (photo archive of S.A. Trepet)

And the preservation of bison in the Western Caucasus was facilitated by the natural conditions of this region and, to a large extent, by the peculiarities of the historical situation in the Kuban Territory. For many centuries this region has been a constant confrontation between nomads and mountaineers. Strange as it may sound now, in those days the main and most convertible commodity were captives, who were consumed in unlimited quantities by the Mediterranean states. In those years, raids by armed detachments with the aim of capturing and transporting slaves to the markets of the Black Sea region were common in those years. The nomads had protection from raids due to their mobility, and the highlanders located their villages in the depths of the mountains under the protection of formidable gorges and rocks. Thus, under the pressure of mutual violence, populous settlements could not form in the foothills of the Caucasus and in the floodplain of the Kuban River, and therefore these underdeveloped lands allowed many wild animals, including bison, to survive safely.

But by the middle of the 18th century, the situation in the area began to change. As a result of a series of victories over the Crimean Khanate, Russia was entrenched in the steppes of the Ciscaucasia. From the mouth of the Terek to the mouth of the Kuban, the "Caucasian cordon line" began to be built along the banks of these rivers, which became the southern border of the state. And as a result, military operations by the nomads against the mountaineers ceased for almost a hundred years.

This situation allowed the highlanders for the first time to begin intensive development and settlement of the foothill zone, while bison were actively displaced and exterminated.

But since 1851, the Caucasian War moved to the Western Caucasus, which by 1864 ended with the victory of Russia. These events played a significant role in the fate of the bison living here, since military actions distracted the population from the intensified pursuit of animals, and as a result of hostilities, civil strife and the accompanying plague epidemics, the population of the region was decreasing. At the same time, from the mountainous regions, where human settlements were previously located in all places suitable for bison, the inhabitants moved to the plain or emigrated to Turkey, as a result of which the mountainous part of the region turned into practically deserted. The foothills, on the other hand, were actively inhabited by both highlanders and migrants from Russia in the coming peacetime, and their pressure on the bison began to increase.

Under these conditions, the bison, being exterminated in the foothills, was able to move to the mountains, where there were no longer any pursuers there. Evidence of contemporaries of those events has survived, which reported about large reserves of processed animal meat seen in the villages of the mountaineers.

But already in the 1880s, economic development penetrated into the forest parts of the mountains and intensified so much that the number of bison began to noticeably decrease, and, according to contemporaries, there were no more than 500 of them. At that time, they were saved from complete extermination only by the fact that the “Kuban Hunt” was organized in the Western Caucasus and a system for the protection of these hunting grounds was established.

• It is worth mentioning in more detail the phenomenon of the existence of grand ducal hunts, since they played a decisive role in the preservation of the native bison in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1888 Belovezhskaya Pushcha the area of \u200b\u200b126 thousand hectares was transferred to the Appanage Department, that is, into the ownership of the royal court. “Caring for the preservation of bison and arranging the tsarist hunts in the future” was one of the main tasks of this department. In the same year, the Kuban hunt was organized "in order to preserve the bison there and arrange a proper hunt." It was organized by the great dukes Romanovs - direct relatives of the emperor of Russia, who received the right to hunt on an area of \u200b\u200b522 thousand hectares. The place was chosen by a connoisseur of the Caucasus and hunting F.I. Concise. To this end, in 1887 he explored the Greater Caucasus Range. In February 1888, a contract was signed giving the princes the exclusive hunting rights on the northern slope of the Great Ridge.

The manager was appointed by E.K. Jutner is an Austrian forester who, using the experience gained in his homeland, organized an effective protection of the bison. A large staff of gamekeepers, substantial expenses for the fight against predators and other activities ensured successful breeding of the bison. It is noteworthy that to shoot bison, hunting for which was prohibited throughout the entire Russian Empire, Grand Duke Sergius Mikhailovich himself had to take a special permit.

Killed bison hunting in the 19th century (photo archive of S.A. Trepeta)

In 1909, the Rada of the Kuban Cossack Host made a decision to divide, after the end of the lease, the territory of the Grand Duke hunting. The lease of a mass of meadows began in the valleys of mountain rivers near their upper reaches, as well as generally in the lower mountain belt, that is, in places where bison and other mountain game descend in snowy winters. The scope of poaching at that time is described in the article by W. Koch.

In the Caucasus, only three bison were caught and removed. The first, who received the nickname Kazbich, was captured in 1866 in the Upper Urup tract and then transported to Moscow, but his further fate is unknown. The second bison-goby was caught near the Kish river in 1899, and in the same year he was taken to the Belovezhskiy menagerie to “refresh the blood” of the local bison on the recommendation of prof. G.P. Kartseva. There is information that this bison, nicknamed Kazan, was not large, as he was greatly affected by the vicissitudes of the big move, but he never got sick. It is known for certain that he lived in an aviary with the rest of the bison back in 1903. However, what happened to him next is not clear, since the entire Bialowieza archive burned down in the First World War.

It would be possible to finish the mention of this bison, but it was from this nursery that 6 animals were removed already in the twentieth century, which are the ancestors of modern animals, and they could well have been his children. In this regard, the controversy continues: have the genes of this Caucasian bison survived or not?

For us, the most interesting is the third bison, which left the genes of the Caucasian bison, and which was destined to play a significant role in the revival of the species. Caught in May 1907 on the slope of Mount Pshekish (according to other sources, to Abago), the bison was transported to Belovezhskaya Pushcha, and in 1908 the Emperor of Russia presented it to the famous naturalist and organizer of zoos Karl Gagenbeck from Hamburg, where he lived until 1922. Then Hagenbeck ceded it to Count Arnim, he was transported to Boitzenburg, where he lived to die naturally on February 26, 1925. This bull, nicknamed the Caucasus, left 7 calves from the Bialowieza bison during his life, which became the founders of the modern Caucasian-Bialowieza line in breeding bison.

• The high scientific value of the Caucasian bison was fully appreciated by both the tsarist and later Soviet governments: both were going to establish a nature reserve here. But the practical protection of these places was managed only by the mid-1920s.

And during the previous years, the Caucasian bison gradually disappeared. In the monographic essay by I.S. Bashkirov noted that in 1927, on Mount Alous, 3 bison were killed by Imeretian shepherds, which were the last in the Caucasus! In the future, neither the bison, nor their fresh traces were found by the guards of the reserve and by special expeditions.

The same fate befell the Bialowieza bison. The last wild Bialowieza bison was killed on February 9, 1921 former employee Belovezhskaya Pushcha Bartholomew Shpakovich. His contemporaries pointed out that it was an act of protest against the actions of the new authorities of the Pushcha, who canceled the conservation of this land and began to plunder the wealth of the Pushcha and total cutting down of the protected forests. The new authorities gave the forest resources of the Pushcha in an unlimited concession to the British firm Century European Corporation, which launched an unprecedented felling of the best forests, and removed several million cubic meters of selected timber! One can understand the motives of this man, but, nevertheless, the last wild bison died!

The Grand Duke hunting bison. XIX century (photo archive of S.A. Trepet)

Rescue of the bison and return to the Caucasus

So, in the world there is not a single free-living bison, previously so long and carefully guarded in Russia. Fortunately, there were people who are not indifferent to their fate. On June 2, 1923, the first international congress dedicated to the problem of animal conservation in nature was held in Paris. At this congress, Jan Stoltzmann's concept of bison rescue was proposed. In August of the same year, the International Society for the Restoration of the Bison was established in Frankfurt, and Kurt Primel, director of the Frankfurt am Main Zoo, was elected its head. Zoologists von der Groeben G. and Erna Mohr conducted an audit of the remaining animals, and in 1926, the first international census of bison was completed, which showed that there were only 52 animals left in the world.

Askania-Nova has become one of the most important stages in the restoration of the bison. Its history is as follows: at the beginning of the 19th century, these lands were donated by Emperor Nicholas I to the Duke of Anhal-Keten, who had arrived from Germany. He founded a settlement there, which he named Askania-Nova. Later, the territory was acquired by the colonist Fein, and after the wedding of his daughter on Falz, the Falz-Fein family, the owners of this land, went. Their grandson Friedrich Eduardovich was interested in zoology, his works and a world-famous menagerie and scientific center appeared. On the basis of this zoo, they were engaged in hybridization of animals, and it was there that for the first time in the world successful experiments on crossing bison and bison were carried out.

During the civil war, Askania-Nova's employees managed to preserve a group of bison, but there were no purebred bison capable of breeding in the USSR. The bison recovery program in Russia was compiled by B.K. Fortunatov. His project was based on a system of breeding animals on the basis of the bison available in the country by means of absorption crossbreeding, so that the proportion of bison's blood would gradually increase. This required the additional purchase of purebred bison.

From the height of modern knowledge and success, it is now possible to question the advisability of being carried away in those days by projects for crossing a bison with a form close to it - the American bison. Probably, one should try to preserve the purebred species as much as possible. But let's see under what circumstances such decisions were made then.

The reality of those years and practice have shown that bison reproduce poorly, and their number continues to decline. By 1927, only 48 bison remained. But the problems continued: in England, in the Woburn Abbey hunting park, owned by the Duke of Bedford, 9 (and this is then almost 20% of all bison) animals were kept - the descendants of animals donated to him at the beginning of the 20th century by the emperor Nicholas II. So this duke arrogantly disregarded the recommendations of zoologists and began to cross his bison with a bull, hybrid with livestock. As a result, all these descendants had to be removed from breeding bison, further reducing the number of unique animals that have survived.

On the other hand, experiments on crossing close forms of bison and bison, which were carried out in Askania-Nova by prof. I.I. Ivanov, showed good results and successful reproduction in hybrid animals. It is noteworthy that a similar program for the restoration of bison was adopted in Germany. Hermann Goering was its curator. This man, who loved hunting, was also the main gamekeeper and forester in the hierarchy of Germany. Until 1939, he repeatedly came to Belovezhskaya Pushcha for hunting amusements and decided to provide his hunting parks with bison and bison. To this end, Goering organized the delivery of bisons to Germany. The famous zoologists brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck, who worked in Berlin and Munich zoos, were directly involved in hybridization and breeding of animals. They were the ones who were involved in the reconstruction of the primitive turp and tarpan (a wild horse that lived in the forests of Europe).

To our great regret, all these bison have not survived, since they died during the Great War.

It should also be remembered that in the pre-war period from Askania-Nova, they repeatedly turned to many foreign owners of bison with a request to sell or exchange animals. This was necessary for the implementation of the project to return the bison to the Caucasus, but it was not possible to obtain a positive decision for a long time. In the work on the reconstruction of the Caucasian bison, it was necessary to proceed from the fact that this form in nature had already completely disappeared, and its genes (“blood”) remained only in interracial hybrids. There were no descendants of the Caucasian bison in Russia, and it was necessary to acquire them.

Negotiations with Germany turned out to be constructive: in 1933, a thoroughbred bison named Bodo was brought to Askania-Nova from Beutzenburg through the mediation of the Rue-Alfred firm in exchange for antelopes and Przewalski's horse. He had 25% Caucasian blood and this was very important for the purposes of the project. With the involvement of Bodo in breeding, Askani-Nova was able to successfully complete the first part of the project - to prepare a group of animals with the blood of real Caucasian bison with minimal participation of American bison genes for transportation to the Caucasus.

Bison in winter at the foot of the mountains (photo by S.A. Trepet)

In 1940, a bull and four bison were sent to the Caucasus (another group of bison from Askania-Nova was sent to the Crimean reserve in 1937). The bison were met at the railway station and further on their own along the mountain roads were overtaken at a distance of 35 km. It is clear that this was a very difficult task, since the animals grew up in treeless steppes and were not familiar with the mountains. What was it like to drive half-wild bison across rough terrain for the employees of the Caucasian Reserve, who at that moment saw such animals for the first time in their lives! But everything went well, and the animals were delivered to the open-air cages prepared in advance, built in the valley of the Kish river and named "Chisinau Bison Park".

In the same 1940, two bison calved, as they arrived already pregnant from the Bodo bull: the first calves were born in the Caucasus. But the successful start did not last long, and in 1941 the only bull Crane fell. It was already unrealistic to provide him with a replacement, since the Great Patriotic War began. However, three bulls were still born from him, and when they reached puberty by 1944, the growth of the herd continued.

By the winter of 1942, the Patriotic War had come to the gorges of the Caucasus, the fighting took place in the immediate vicinity of the bison park. To save the bison from bombing and other vicissitudes of the war, the employees took the animals out of the enclosures and drove them into a hard-to-reach gorge. During the war years, not a single animal was lost!

Zubroved S.G. Kalugin (photo archive of S.A. Trepet)

Since 1946, work on the restoration of bison continued. The technology has changed: the animals grazed freely, and only in the winter time they were fed and given salt - the bison began to live independently and freely. The project for breeding bison and their adaptation to the conditions of the Caucasus Mountains was carried out by S.G. Kalugin. In 1952 he organized the transfer of a group of bison to the eastern area of \u200b\u200bthe reserve in the Umpyr depression. This basin has conditions suitable for bison, is located in the depths of the reserve and is inaccessible. And 18 bison were driven 65 km away through passes, rocks and mountain rivers. The event took 3 days, but some of the animals then returned. The next year I had to repeat everything, and taking into account the experience gained, this time the animals were placed in an aviary.

Winter in the mountains (photo by S.A. Trepeta)

Bison, mastering the basin, gradually ascending along a chain of meadows located along the Umpyrka river, themselves came out to alpine meadows. The descendants of animals raised in the steppes, like their aboriginal predecessors, began to make vertical migrations. But the bison from Kishi did not make such attempts, and since 1949 they were forcibly driven into the mountains to alpine meadows for five years. Subsequently, the animals began to make such movements on their own.

A new stage in the life of bison in the Caucasus began in 1949. In Poland, the Soviet Union acquired a group of purebred bison in exchange for exotic animals (polar bears, camels and elk). These bison became the basis for their breeding in Russia. Two bison were brought to the Caucasian reserve. The first was the bull Pushchanin, and then, two years later, Puhar was also delivered. Subsequently, a total of 15 purebred bison were brought to the reserve, but this time from Russian nurseries.

• The use of purebred bison in breeding made it possible to almost completely replace the blood of the American bison. Since 1960, bison became so numerous and wild that it became impossible to manage this population, and they settled in more and more corners of the reserve.

Bison in the snow (photo by S.A. Trepet)

Contemporary challenges to Caucasian bison

Continuing work on the restoration of bison in the Caucasus after S.G. Aleksandr Stepanovich Nemtsev became Kalugin. He is an outstanding scientist-zoologist who devoted 20 years of his life to studying the nature of the reserve and preserving the bison. To our great regret, he was tragically killed in a plane crash while flying over the territory of the reserve on a Sesna aircraft made in Poland in 2001. The results of his research are combined in the monograph "Bison in the Caucasus". This beautifully illustrated edition was published in 2003, but the author did not find the result of his work.

Zubroved A.S. Germans in the forest (S.A. Trepet's photo archive)

By the early 1980s, the feasibility of work on the restoration of bison in the Caucasian reserve was questioned. The reason for this was the hybrid past of animals. They began to develop solutions for the removal of bison from the nature of the Western Caucasus. Actually, the results of research and the activity of A.S. Nemtseva were able to protect the animals from possible problems.

Of course, in discussing the taxonomic status of the bison, for the name of which the definition “mountain” has already become familiar, modern genetics must have its say. But calculations have already shown that the share of the American bison's blood is only 5%, and natural selection has fixed the external appearance of the animals, which is identical to the exterminated Caucasian bison.

Other examples: the red red deer, which is so abundant in modern Europe, has an admixture of the blood of its American cousin, the wapiti deer. The same problem is with the Przewalski's horse: a significant part of the individuals have an admixture of "blood" from a domestic horse - a different species. At the same time, it is already known that the adaptive capabilities of the mountain bison are an order of magnitude higher than those of purebreds. Attempts to naturalize purebred bison have been repeatedly made both in the Carpathian and Caucasian mountains, but the result of these works is almost zero: the animals drag out a truly miserable existence in the mountains, they reproduce poorly and hardly populate adjacent territories.

Zubroved A.S. Germans on the march (photo archive of S.A. Trepet)

But let us return to the further fate of the mountain bison saved from absurd administrative decisions. The population of these animals continued to flourish in the Western Caucasus. Bison have mastered the territory of the Caucasian Reserve, and settled in neighboring areas. In terms of their appearance - phenotype and behavioral features - they became identical to their exterminated predecessors. The total number of bison was already approaching 1500, and they also settled in the vicinity of the reserve.

However, since the early 1990s, the fate of the animals has changed again. Funding for nature conservation has practically ceased, and the social and economic structures of the region have been destroyed. As a result of rampant poaching, even with the use of helicopters, the sound of which still causes panic among bison, the animals disappeared in most of their former habitat. Hard-to-reach mountain ranges and the unprecedented efforts of the reserve staff and its new leadership saved them from complete destruction.

According to zoologists, only 150 bison managed to escape and only in the hard-to-reach Umpyr depression! These animals, fleeing extermination, even changed their habits. So, before the onset of winter, mountain bison migrated to foothill forests, where there is usually little snow and there is available food. These places are also the most accessible for poachers. Now bison for the winter climb to the tops of the mountains, where there are alpine meadows, and the snow is blown away by the winds, and there they spend the whole winter.

The current situation with the Caucasian bison is beginning to improve, at present there are more than half a thousand of them.

• Despite the fact that work on the restoration of bison in the world has been going on for 80 years, their results still cannot be considered successful.

Illegal hunting continues to be a factor hindering species recovery. The lack of favorable wintering grounds within the Kavkazsky Reserve and the lack of proper protection of adjacent territories limit the possibilities for the settlement of bison. The taxonomic status of mountain bison is not definitively determined and is a subject of discussion.

* Society for the Conservation of Nature and Biodiversity (NABU, Germany) at present they are implementing a program for the conservation of the mountain bison population in the Caucasus. The main goal of the first stage of this program is to assess the current state and the possibility of preserving the population of the mountain bison. The research is carried out by employees of the scientific department of the Caucasian Reserve and a specialist from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution named after A. A.N. Severtsov. Along with traditional population studies, the genetic structure of the bison population is being studied. The applied part of the project involves the development and implementation of practical measures aimed at the preservation and further development of the mountain bison population, as well as the resettlement of these animals to new regions. This work will make it possible to confirm the nature conservation significance of the mountain bison at the federal and international levels and ensure its long-term preservation in the Caucasus.

Taras Sipko with bison

The article was sent specially for Wildlife.by by T.P. Sipko.

* Taras Petrovich SIPKO - Candidate of Biological Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution. A.N. Severtsov RAS. Chairman of the Committee for the Study of Bison, Bison and Musk Oxen of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is engaged in the reintroduction of bison, forest bison, musk ox, elk in Russia, as well as studying the genetic aspects of the preservation and development of populations of ungulates. Author of over 200 publications, including three collective monographs. Project manager for the settlement of the Arctic musk ox, as well as curator of the project for the conservation of the reindeer.

* The article "The Return of the Bison to the Caucasus: 70 Years of the Great Project" was previously published on the international site dedicated to the bison: