40 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
EUROPEAN BISON; WISENT 
One of the two animats of this species exhibited in the Zoological Park. 
Photograph by El win R. Sanborn. 
following years severe epidemics broke out, so 
that only 727 remained in 1914. The war was 
naturally disastrous, so that when the German 
administration of the forest started, scarcely 160 
remained. Since this event the wisents were 
counted every month as far as possible, and in 
March, 1917, the count showed 121, consisting 
of eighteen old and eighteen young bulls, thirty 
old and thirty-six young cow r s, and nineteen 
calves. In 1918, after thirty square kilometers 
of the forest had been reserved as a natural 
sanctuary, the herd seems to have increased to 
170 or 180 head. 
The German efforts to protect the wisent 
began in March, 1915, when Professor Con- 
wentz, head of the “Staatliehe Stelle fiir Natur- 
denkmalpflege in Preussen” (Prussian Bureau 
for the Protection of Nature) called the atten¬ 
tion of several army commanders in the East 
to the endangering of the wisent. The ninth 
army therefore caused a strict prohibition of 
wisent shooting to be issued, and on October 1, 
1915, Captain (later Major) Escherich, a 
Bavarian Forstrat (forest commissioner), was 
appointed commander and head of the German 
forest administration of the occupied district. 
Owing to the energetic efforts of this active 
and experienced forest official, complete pro¬ 
tection of the remainder of the wisent herd in 
this extensive forest, the inaccessible recesses 
of which rendered any control extremely diffi¬ 
cult, was finally carried through. 
As early as September 25, 1915, a ruling 
regarding hunting was issued by Lieutenant- 
General von Seckendorff, which declared: “We 
desire to preserve the wisent herds as far as 
possible, although this is enemy territory, so 
as to convey to posterity a natural monument of 
peculiar value.” Thus the best hopes for the 
future were entertained, but then came the col¬ 
lapse of the German power and the revolution 
of November, 1918. On December 16, 1918, 
shortly after the revolution, Major Escherich 
wrote to the “Staatliehe Stelle”: “In conse¬ 
quence of the events of the past weeks the mili¬ 
tary forest administration can no longer exercise 
any control over the protection of game in the 
forest of Bialowies and consequently the wisent 
herd of 170-180 head is seriously reduced. The 
