Bialowieza-Poland-2018

Bison like old Hollywood Westerns.

This tour, led by Marc Graf, takes us into the forests of eastern Poland directly by the Belarusian border. The forest jungle of the Bialowieza National Park is 1500 square kilometers in size, of which about 600 square kilometers are in Poland. In the extensive forest complex you will find, among other things, the highest European broad-leaved trees over 50m high. The old, native and completely natural forest alone is worth the trip, rightly earning its title as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In addition to 12,000 animal species, it is also home to the rare European bison. These currently about 400 bison actually went extinct in 1927 and to my knowledge they were bred from zoo animals and American bison and were successfully released into the wild in 1952. Nevertheless, the forest is illegally cut down by Poland, and nobody knows exactly what is happening in Belarus. In order to photograph herds of bison, we carefully stalk through the snow-covered heath and the underwood in a small group with a Polish photo guide. I always get the feeling of being like a tracker, everything is very exciting for me since you never know where the big animals are really going to be. If you then suddenly find bison hairs in the snow, your pulse will definitely go up. The highlight for me are three large wisent bulls in the forest, my very personal “Revenant moment”. But we also find wild boar tracks and learn about wolves, which only the very fortunate get to see. For two days we change back and forth between different outlook towers and see huge golden eagles and some other birds of prey. Luckily, Marc wakes me up in time when the extremely cautious eagles finally land after 4 hours. I fell into a deep adventurer sleep given that we went to the hiding spots very early in the protective darkness, walking in the snow to not alarm the shy birds and especially not tip off the intelligent and attentive ravens, for if the ravens strike, the photo day would be over.