How bison returned to the Caucasian reserve Kuban studies. The history of the revival of the bison in the Caucasus

Various reasons have led to the decrease and even extinction of some species of animals and plants. To stop this process, humanity came up with the Red Book. This is a kind of list of endangered birds, animals, insects, etc. Take, for example, the bison. The Russian Red Book classifies it as a “threatened species.”

History of the Red Book

In 1948, the International Union, abbreviated as IUCN, led the conservation efforts of various organizations operating in most countries of the world. The Species Survival Commission was soon created. The purpose of this commission was to create a global list of endangered animals.

There was a lot of work ahead. It was necessary not only to develop general principles for protection, but also to identify endangered species, classify them, and do much more. When the work was done, they decided to name the book red because this color signals danger.

The Red Book was first published in 1963 and included a description of 312 species and subspecies of birds and 211 species and subspecies of mammals. Each subsequent edition expanded the list of endangered birds and animals. This list also includes bison. The IUCN Red List, however, classifies it as vulnerable, not endangered.

The Red Book of Russia

The Red Book of the Russian Federation was published in 2001. Although the Red Book was taken as a basis, there was a new, thoroughly revised and expanded edition. It included amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals - 231 taxa. This is a 73 percent increase from the previous book. The list of invertebrate animals, fish and fish-like animals has grown significantly. Some species, after careful processing, on the contrary, were excluded from the list.

However, such an animal as the European bison is included in the Red Book of the Russian Federation in its list. Moreover, the bison is classified as “endangered”.

The largest mammal in Europe

There is no heavier or larger land mammal in Europe. The bison is very close to its American relative, the bison.

The weight of the bison can reach 1 ton, the body length - 330 cm, and the height - two meters. Its fur is dark brown in color.

It is distinguished from the bison by a higher hump, longer horns and tail.

The life expectancy of the bison is 23-25 ​​years. It reaches its maximum size already at 5-6 years of age.

Bison prefer to live in herds. But, characteristically, the female leads the herd. And it consists mainly of young calves and females. Adult males prefer solitude. They visit the herd only for mating.

By the way, a female bison carries her cub for 9 months as well. Only, unlike a human baby, within an hour the little bison is on its feet and ready to run after its mother. And after twenty days he can already feed on fresh grass on his own. Although the female does not stop feeding the baby milk for five months.

There are two subspecies of this large animal - the Belovezhsky and Caucasian bison. The IUCN Red List lists the latter as an endangered species.

Bison habitat

In the Middle Ages, this animal lived over a large area - from the Iberian Peninsula. However, hunting and poaching played a role in the sharp decline in their numbers. The First World War completed this dirty deed.

There is information that the last bison living in the wild was destroyed in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in 1921, and in the Caucasus - in 1926. By that time, 66 bison were preserved in zoos and private property.

The International Society for the Conservation of Bison, formed in 1923, was called upon to work to restore the numbers of such rare animals as the bison. The Red Book had not yet been invented. We can say that the world community has coped with this task. Today, bison have even been moved out of zoos into the wild and live in Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Spain, Ukraine, Germany and Slovakia.

How the bison population was restored

Work to restore the number of bison began before World War II, mainly in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Poland, and in zoological parks in Europe. It is clear that the war destroyed the results of this work.

A continuation followed after its completion. They started rescuing bison again in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, but this time on the territory of the Soviet Union. This work was crowned with success, and already in 1961, bison began to be resettled in their natural habitat.

By the way, if a sufficient number of Belovezhsk bison have survived for their further reproduction, then the Caucasian bison survived in captivity only in a single copy. Therefore, we had to start breeding hybrid animals.

Caucasian bison

In another way it was called Dombay and was classified as a subspecies of European bison that lived in the forests of the Main Caucasus Range. It was slightly smaller than its European brother and darker in color. In addition, his fur was curly, and his horns curved more strongly.

In terms of life expectancy, the Caucasian bison was somewhat inferior to its Belovezhskaya counterpart. The hardiest among them could live a little over 20 years.

However, people tirelessly exterminated this animal. As a result, by the mid-19th century there were no more than 2,000 Dombays left, and after the First World War - 500.

The fact of poaching has been established, which finally exterminated the Dombai. This happened in 1927 on Mount Alous. It was then that the Caucasian bison disappeared from the face of the earth. The IUCN Red List classifies it as an endangered species.

Revival of the bison in the Caucasus

Of course, this was no longer Dombay. However, the bison appeared again in the Caucasus.

In the summer of 1940, a male and several female bison were brought to the Caucasus Nature Reserve. They were crossed with the Belovezhsk-Caucasian bison. The latter are still preserved in some zoos around the world.

The scientists' work was crowned with success. Now the Caucasian bison is almost no different from the native Dombai. However, bison do not live in the wild. They live only in the Caucasian and Teberdinsky reserves, as well as in the Tseysky reserve in North Ossetia.

Regional Red Books

Many constituent entities of the Russian Federation have published their own regional Red Books. This was done to give greater importance to the protection of rare species of animals, birds and plants in the regions. Of course, not all of these species are significant on a global scale. But the local flora and fauna are no less important for the population living there than an individual endangered species on a global scale.

However, some species of animals from the regional Red Books are of global importance. For example, bison. includes this animal. Because the habitat of bison in Russia also extends to the basins of the Belaya and Malaya Laba rivers, part of which is located in the Krasnodar Territory. And now there are very few of them there. But in the mid-19th century, bison in the Kuban region were not uncommon. The Red Book now warns of careful treatment of these animals.

In addition, in Russia, the school educational program aims not only to instill in children a love for their native land, but also to cultivate a caring attitude towards representatives of flora and fauna. One of the most colorful among them is the bison. The Red Book for Children in pictures demonstrates it in all its glory. This is a clear example of how, without protection, beautiful animals can disappear from the face of the earth.

Bison nurseries in Russia

The first nursery in Russia was created in 1948 in the Moscow region, in the Serpukhov district, within the boundaries of the biosphere reserve there. Since 1959, the nursery has been operating in the Spassky district of the Ryazan region. Since 1989, there has been a free population of bison in the Vladimir region. The Kaluga Zaseki Nature Reserve (borders of the Kaluga, Oryol and Tula regions) is home to several groups of bison, numbering 120 individuals.

In 1996, bison were also brought to the Oryol Polesye National Park, located in the north-west of the Oryol region. Now their population has increased to 208 individuals.

However, most of the bison live in their homeland - in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, which, as is known, is located on the territory of two states: Belarus and Poland. In the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park of the Republic of Belarus, the number of bison is 360 individuals, and in Poland - about 400. Together they form the largest population of this rare species in the world. By the way, the symbol of Belarus is the bison. We remind you that the IUCN Red List classifies this animal as vulnerable.

This term has other meanings, see Bison (meanings). Bison ... Wikipedia

In the western part of the Main Range of the Greater Caucasus. Founded in 1924. Area 263,485 hectares and approx. 300 hectares Khosta tissot boxwood grove (branch). Altitude zones from alpine meadows to deciduous forests. Many endemic plants (Caucasian fir,... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

CAUCASIAN RESERVE, in the western part of the Main Range of the Greater Caucasus. Founded in 1924. Sq. 280.4 thousand hectares and approx. 300 hectares Khosta yew-boxwood grove (branch). Altitude zones from alpine meadows to deciduous forests. Many endemic... ...Russian history

- (Bison bonasus), mammal of the family. bovids. Together with bison, it forms the genus of bison. Dl. bodies up to 3.5 m, high. at the withers up to 2 m, weight up to 1 t; females are smaller. The horns are relatively small (females have smaller ones), with a smooth surface. Hairline... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary

The territory of the Caucasian State Natural Biosphere Reserve ... Wikipedia

Caucasian Nature Reserve is a state nature reserve. Full name: Caucasian State Natural Biosphere Reserve. The largest and oldest specially protected natural area in the North Caucasus. Located... Wikipedia

bison- Belovezhsky bison. bison (Bison bonasus), a mammal of the bovid family. Together with bison, it forms the genus of bison. The body length of males is up to 3.5 m, height at the withers is up to 2 m, weight is up to 1 t; females are smaller. The head is massive, with a wide forehead, the horns are relatively... ... Agriculture. Large encyclopedic dictionary

Borders, composition, space, population and density. Nature and relief. Waters, seashores, rivers, lakes, artificial irrigation. Climatic conditions. Vegetation, forests, wildlife, fishing. Ethnographic composition... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

In the western part of the Main Range of the Greater Caucasus. Founded in 1924. Area 280.4 thousand hectares and about 300 hectares Khosta yew-boxwood grove (branch). Altitude zones from alpine meadows to deciduous forests. Many endemic plants (Caucasian... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Belarus, famous for its European bison, is, oddly enough, only in fourth place. Most of these powerful beasts are found in the Caucasus. And they have always been found: it’s not for nothing that the famous Dombay, translated from Karachay, simply means “bison.”

BEYOND EXTINCTION...

“Bison” - we are talking about an experienced person, a master, a specialist, a powerful authority figure. A sensitive language caught it exactly: back in the 18th century, the Russian language dictionary spoke about the bison, “which in its ferocity is not inferior to the most fierce animals: it is incomparably thicker and stronger than any cattle.”

The most powerful and largest animal of land Europe used to roam in abundance in the Dombay forests, and the highest mountain in this area is called Dombay-Yolgen, which translated means “killed bison.” They called it what they croaked! Animals, which are few in number, were included in the “Red Book,” joked the caustic Faina Ranevskaya, and those that are numerous were included in the “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food.” Alas, we have nothing to please the reader: the “Red Book” classifies the bison as vulnerable.

A powerful beast is beyond the reach of its four-legged brothers, but, as the writer Georgy Alexandrov noted long ago, no one can treat animals as brutally as humans. Man has brought the bison to the brink of extinction, and even brought it beyond this brink. And he - no, of course, other people - revived the bison and again released it into the forests and mountains. Just like the phoenix bird, the bison rose from oblivion.

UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE ROMANOVS...

Like the Belovezhsky bison, the Caucasian bison is a relic, that is, practically a relic of the past. That very past, when the wild shaggy bull roamed freely throughout Europe - almost from the Atlantic to the Urals itself. But it was mercilessly eaten, and not so much because of its excellent taste - bison just doesn’t taste very good! - because of its luxurious size: one bison fed a whole tribe.

It cannot be said that they did not encroach on the Caucasian. But this is exactly the case when the war turned out to be a mother: until 1864, the Caucasian population had no time to hunt. Then peace came, and an intensive attack on nature began - with all the ensuing consequences for nature.

The bison almost became extinct right at the end of the 80s of the 19th century, but then the imperial family personally intervened in its fate. To take care of the bison, Belovezhskaya Pushcha was transferred to the ownership of the royal court. And in the Caucasus they organized the Grand Ducal Kuban Hunt - “in order to save bison there and organize a proper hunt,” as they wrote in the document. What is allowed to Jupiter is inaccessible to mere mortals: even the Grand Duke, that is, a relative of the emperor, took special permission to shoot bison. They took care of bison in the Kuban hunt - they spent money on fighting predators and kept rangers.

FORGET THE HEROstratus AND REVIVE THE BISON...

On February 9, 1921, a single well-aimed shot secured the Polish forester Bartholomew Shpakovich a place in history on a par with Herostratus and Nero. This shot ended the life of the last bison in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Unlike Shpakovich, the names of the Caucasian herostrati did not go down in history.

A bison killed during a hunt. Photo from the end of the 19th century. (photo archive of S.A. Trepet)

Three Imeretian shepherds committed an act of vandalism on Mount Alous in 1927. Three barbarously destroyed bison turned out to be the last of the Caucasian Mohicans. Everything seems to be finite! - but no: just 13 years later, on June 29, 1940, 5 animals, which biological science calls bison, were unloaded at the Khadzhokh station in Adygea.

Mutaha and other Mumu

The safe return of the “prodigal sons” - four-year-old bison, who wandered through the forests near Moscow for almost 10 days, took place the other day in the Prioksko-Terrasny Nature Reserve in the Serpukhov District. The ungulates that escaped on July 11 after the fall of the fence were discovered by reserve specialists... 30 kilometers from their native nursery. To return the fugitives home, experts conducted an entire special operation involving small aircraft. There were also psychological techniques and aphrodisiacs that scientists had to use so that the animals, without unnecessary anxiety and fear, of their own free will, and not at the crack of a whip, would follow in the direction in which the reserve is located.

The background to this incredible adventure is as follows. A massive escape of ungulates occurred after another July storm. The storm wind knocked down three spruce and four pine trees onto the fence of the enclosure. Under this weight, the metal structure, which reached 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 broke free. Although a paradox! The bison were already sure that they lived in freedom - they were hardly aware of the boundaries of their possessions. And the fence was more of an element of the landscape for them, rather than some kind of limitation. Nevertheless, as soon as this element fell, the horizon line turned out to be even further away, and the animals, driven either by inner instinct or by the sound of thunder, rushed into the thick of the forest.

As soon as the loss was discovered, 20 volunteers went in search of the missing livestock. During the first 24 hours they searched for the animals within a radius of 15 kilometers from the reserve, but there was no trace of them. More precisely, the tracks were washed away by the rain. Then the head of the administration ordered that small aircraft be involved in the search, and soon a sports plane and several hang gliders set off to look for the fugitives.

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

By the way, in the 69 years of the reserve’s existence, such an emergency associated with the violence of natural disasters occurred for the first time. Probably, endless rains washed away the root system of pines and spruces, and a strong wind swayed their trunks, so, falling on a completely stable fence, the trees broke it with their enormous 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 who profit from bison meat, they will not avoid retribution and criminal liability.

The fugitives were found 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 part of the wild. They should not see or hear any whip, shepherd, heavy equipment or domestic animals. Therefore, scientists resorted to several tricks: first they set up a pen, and then threw a tasty treat to the animals.

At first we walked in a line in their direction, but the bison bypassed it and returned to their original place - to a meadow where there was a lot of tasty grass,” said Irina Zemlyanko. - The next day they were no longer there. We started to follow the tracks. They sprinkled food in the clearings to lure the bison, but the wind blew in the other direction, and they did not smell the feeding. And then we finally found them and, lining up in the letter P, went to corral them. There were three kilometers between us and the animals. To make them run to the reserve, we shouted, howled, and whistled. Who cares? Unless they sang songs.

And after driving the bison, it was decided to leave them alone for a while,” volunteers who participated in the search told MK. - It was noticed that they took the same path along which they left the nursery, and there is great hope that they will move along it back to their usual quiet places. Inspectors and bison breeders cleared clearings littered 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 Nature Reserve, returning to the strictly protected territory. Here no one will touch or offend them.

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

There were three “whys” in this whole story: why did generally calm, if not sedentary, animals literally rush out of the enclosure as soon as the fence collapsed? After all, their living area 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 that every wild animal has should have told the ungulates the way home. And finally, why did it take them so long to come back? Scientists found them on July 13. And the operation to return them home ended only on the 20th.

According to the assumption of the reserve's employees, those who escaped 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 noises,” said Irina Zemlyanko. - If, for example, there is a wild boar, deer or elk nearby, they lie down and do not twitch. But if the bison hear a person 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 ran away, they heard barking in that place. They were chased by dogs! We flew like crazy for 20 kilometers! And then they switched from a gallop to a calm walk.

In all likelihood, the deserters were in no hurry to go home because they were not hungry. The fugitives had a large food supply at hand: water meadows, and even a whole lake. Plus the ability to move freely. So they cannot be called lost. They just became even more free and even more wild.

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

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In the 20s of the 20th century, the bison was endangered. The last wild Caucasian bison were shot in the Western Caucasus in 1926, and the last representative of the plain lineage in the wild was killed in 1921 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. All today's bison descend from twelve individuals that were kept in zoos and nature reserves at the beginning of the 20th century. Low genetic variability is one of the main threats to the long-term conservation of the species. Thanks to conservation efforts on the part of zoos and private individuals, in 1952 it became possible to reintroduce the first free herds of bison in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. In 2013, there were 5,249 individuals in the world, of which 1,623 animals lived in captivity.

BY THE WAY

According to the Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology 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 be freely walking through the forests of the Moscow region, surprising no one,” Donskoy wrote on the social network.

About existence Caucasian bison* The scientific community finally learned only in the 19th century. Their rarity and complete lack of knowledge have attracted the attention of many researchers in Europe and Russia. At the same time, to this day, historical information and evidence about the existence and distribution of the Caucasian bison from ancient times to the mid-19th century is scarce and extremely fragmentary.

The bison is one of the oldest species of wild animals. It was found in the North Caucasus back in the Paleolithic period. Thus, according to archaeologists, at the Ilskaya Paleolithic site, ancient hunters killed the most bison - 43 individuals, while mammoths - 5, and giant deer - 4. Large animals were also discovered at the Dakhovskaya cave site of primitive man not far from Maykop. The cave is characterized as a temporary hunting settlement of the Paleolithic era. A mammoth scapula and femur, as well as a large number of bison bones, were found here. Fifteen thousand fragments of animal bones, mostly belonging to bison, were found at the Barakaevskaya cave site in the Mostovsky district of the Krasnodar Territory. In addition, N.K. Vereshchagin mentions two bison skulls extracted from the first terrace above the Terek River near Mozdok, while the cavities of the bison skulls were filled with volcanic ash.

A - Caucasian subspecies; b - Belovezhsky subspecies

As we can see, early monuments of material culture dating back to the Paleolithic and Late Neolithic eras were discovered throughout the Caucasus. In all likelihood, initially the distribution area of ​​the Caucasian bison was not limited to any one part of the Caucasus, but was located over a significant area along most of the Caucasian ridge.

Once upon a time, bison lived near Elbrus and further to the east, which is proven by the presence of their skulls in the indicated places. The fact that bison lived on the now treeless plain and in the mountains of the Central Ciscaucasia is evidenced by collections of skulls of these giants collected in Ossetian sanctuaries - dzuars (XVIII-XIX centuries). As for Transcaucasia, Rashid ad-Din reported that Abaga Khan, wintering in 1275-1276. in Arran and 5 farsangs from Shahrud, he began to hunt “mountain buffalo” in the forest. When describing the hunt of Gazan Khan in Talysh in 1301-1302, this chronicler noted: “After this, the warriors staged a raid and drove away the game, somehow: mountain buffalo, Juras, wild goats and donkeys, jackals, foxes, wolves, bears and other all kinds of wild and predatory animals inside the fence, until they all gathered in that enclosure.” At the same time, rumors about wild bulls in the mountains of Talysh and Elbrus persisted until the 19th century.

Very little information is available regarding how the bison's distribution area narrowed over time. This poverty of information can be attributed to the fact that most of the naturalists who wrote about the Caucasus in their time either did not talk about bison at all, or said very little about them.

In European science, the Caucasian bison was first mentioned in literature in the 17th century. In 1625, the Dominican monk Jean de Luca, in his “Description of the Perekop and Nogai Tatars, Circassians, Mingrelians and Georgians,” describing a feast among the Circassians, mentions that “instead of glasses they use horns wild buffalo and other animals."

A few decades later, in 1654, another Dominican friar Arcangelo Lamberti*, in his work “Description of Colchis, now called Mingrelia, which speaks of the origin, customs and nature of these countries,” pointed out, albeit rumored, the existence of a certain “wild buffalo” on the border of Mingrelia: “The Mingrelians claim that there are wild buffalos on the border with Abkhazia.”

The famous naturalist of the 18th century, Peter Simon Pallas, in his classic work “Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica” also provides interesting data about the bison of the Caucasus.

P. S. Pallas

In particular, he refers to the news that he managed to find in the archives of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. According to them, Georg Moritz Lowitz, a Russian-German mathematician, astronomer and geographer, after one of his travels in southern Russia, left a note in which he mentions a bison killed around 1770 by the Abkhaz prince Islam near modern Pyatigorsk, under Mount Beshtau . The distance between the horns of this bison was 17 inches, and belts with a total length of 29 English feet were cut from its skin in the back area.

The next most recent news about the Caucasian bison, which Pallas cites, belongs to Johann Anton Gyldenstedt, a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the leader of one of the academic expeditions that worked in the Caucasus from 1770 to 1774. Traveling around Digoria, he visited the cave-sanctuary Olisay-dom, located in the gorge of the river. Urukh near the village of Zadelesk, where he examined those placed there skulls of various sacrificial animals*. Among them, he discovered 14 bison skulls. Having measured them, Gyldenstedt was convinced that they were significantly inferior in size to the skulls of the Belovezhsky bison.

G. M. Lovitz

However, in Moscow they knew about the Caucasian bison long before the reports of Lovitz and Gyldenstedt. In the X volume of the “Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire since 1649”, number 7994, there is a Personalized Order “On the capture and sending to the Court and the Izmailovo Menagerie of various live animals every year,” given from the office of Her Majesty Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Astrakhan Chief Commandant on December 31 1738. In particular, it states:

“We also know that in Kabarda there are wild bulls and kdos, which in the local language are called domba, so you have to try in every possible way, without sparing, to use some of our treasury money so that the local princes of the same kind of bulls and They ordered to catch young heifers in groups of 5 or 10 and send them to the Kizlyar fortress, and there they were fed bread for a while, and when they got used to it, they were sent to Astrakhan with water, and from Astrakhan they were sent with other animals to Moscow, and about the same thing You should write on your own behalf to Shamkhal Gorsky, also to the commandant of the Kizlyar fortress, and to Elmurza Cherkassky, so that you make every effort to catch and send these bulls and heifers.”

In this regard, it is quite possible that bison were found in Chechnya and North Ossetia even during the Güldenstedt expedition, i.e. in 1770-1774.

E. Ménétrier

After the travels of I. A. Gyldenstedt, for a long time there was no news about the Caucasian bison, so that already in 1825, Professor of the Vilna University L. G. Boyanus recognized the existence of bison in Moldova and the Caucasus as fabulous: "Fabulosae sunt quae de Moldaviae et Caucasi Uro hodierno passim dicuntur» .

In 1829, on the initiative of the head of the Caucasian line, General G. A. Emmanuel, the famous expedition to explore Elbrus and the Caucasus Mountains was carried out. As a result of the expedition, extensive factual material was collected for further research, but the expedition zoologist, curator of the zoological office of the Academy of Sciences E. Menetrier did not find any traces of bison in the Elbrus area, and was forced to assume that in his time the bison no longer lived in the Caucasus, but was quite common there 60-80 years before.

At the beginning of the 19th century, naturalist E.I. Eichwald collected news about the whereabouts of the wild bulls still alive. As a result of these investigations, in 1835, Eichwald’s article about bison appeared in the Forest Journal, in which he, among other things, mentioned Caucasians who visited the Zoological Museum in Vilna and recognized the Belovezhsk bison as an animal identical to the Caucasian one, called “Dombey”. In addition, in another of his works, Eichwald indicated that the bison in the Caucasus lived “in Greater Kabarda, on the northern slopes of Elbrus, near the Babuk River, which flows into the Terek River, which flows into the Agura River, which in turn flows into the Kuban.” He also claimed that the Kabardians living in these places still hunt bison. .

E. I. Eichwald

In April 1836, the learned naturalist and professor at the Odessa Richelieu Lyceum, Alexander von Nordmann, visited the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea. On this expedition he was accompanied gardener of the Odessa Botanical Garden T. Dollinger and famous romantic prose writer A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, who knew local customs and topography very well*.

Traveling around the Caucasus in those years was not at all like a resort walk. The expedition made the sea route from Gelendzhik to Sukhum on the military frigate Burgas. The local residents were not friendly towards the Russians, and the travelers were forced to make peculiar landings: twenty times they landed on the shore under the cover of a convoy with a cannon, collected samples and ran back to the ship. In the vicinity of Gelendzhik, Gagra, Pitsunda, New Athos and Sukhum, the expedition managed to collect up to 2000 plant specimens and a rich collection of insects and amphibians. Then the detachment landed on one of the mountains of the Meskheti ridge. There, weakened by malaria, he lived in ruins previously inhabited by Adjarian shepherds, and for three weeks explored the nearby peaks, after which the travelers returned home on horseback through Kutais and Zugdidi and by sea through Poti, Gelendzhik and Sevastopol.

The results of the expedition, for which A. Nordman received a royal award in the form of a diamond ring in 1836, were significant: 12,000 plant samples were obtained (among the new plants delivered by Nordman was Transcaucasian fir), 300 mollusks, 232 bird carcasses, 3,600 insects and so on. In addition, the scientist compiled a list of historical ruins (of 43 places) on the territory of Abkhazia. However, the most interesting information was about bison.

Thus, Nordman reports that “although the bison is no longer found near the mountain road from Taman to Tiflis, it is often found inside the mountain ranges of the Caucasus.” Already in Gelendzhik, he learned that in the Kuban there are areas where bison live in large numbers.

Nordman points out that “the permanent habitat of bison is a space of at least 200 versts from the Kuban River to the sources of the Bzyb River. In the Kuban, bison live in swampy areas all year round. In the country of the Abadzekhs, in the summer, bison go to the mountains, since the Dzhiget and Aibga tribes, as well as residents of the Pskhu district, quite often hunt them. In autumn and winter, bison descend back to the valleys. From Bambor, the closest place where bison are especially common is in the lands called Zaadan, located between the Abkhaz and Dzhiget tribes.”

A. F. Nordman

In Abkhazia, in Bambory, Nordman was shown princely cups made from bison horns. At a feast at the Mingrelian prince Levon Dadiani, Nordman counted 50-70 similar cups, and in Imereti he encountered similar cups inlaid with silver. At the same time, Nordman notes that all these cups were taken from Abkhazia.

When he returned to Abkhazia in the late autumn of 1836, he learned that not far from Sukhum-Kale, Prince Hassan Bey received news that, as a result of snow that had recently fallen in the mountains, bison had appeared in the valleys of the Pskhu tribe. Nordman was unable to take advantage of the expedition to this country due to lack of funds. They took it upon themselves to get a bison for 150 silver rubles.

In addition to all this data, Nordman, relying on the oral reports of Baron F. F. Tornau, talks about one Caucasian hunt for bison in the Bolshoy Zelenchuk valley and notes that these animals are found not only on the indicated river, but also in rocky, abundant gorges in the Urup and Bolshaya Laba valleys, as well as in the coniferous forests of the Main Range below the eternal snow line. The memoirs of Baron Tornau himself came to light a little later.

Fedor Fedorovich Tornau - Russian officer, diplomat, writer, intelligence officer, participant in the Caucasian War. From 1835 to 1838 he spent among the highlanders as a scout, including as a prisoner. His first expedition followed the route from Gagra through the sources of Chkhalta and the Main Caucasus Range in the Bolshoi Zelenchuk Gorge and further along the Urup valley to the stations of Batalpashinskaya and Pyatigorsk. On his next campaign, Tornau was the first of the Russians, under the guise of a highlander, to penetrate in 1835 through the Main Caucasian Range (Pseashkho Pass) into the area of ​​modern Greater Sochi (Krasnaya Polyana, Kudepsta, Khosta, Matsesta, Central part of Sochi) with the purpose of “secret observation of the sea coast to north of Gagra." During the third expedition to explore the sea coast from the river. Sochi to Gelendzhik, as a result of the betrayal of the guides, Tornau was captured by the Kabardians, where he spent two years and two months. The mountaineers demanded a huge ransom for him: as much gold as the prisoner himself weighed. After several unsuccessful attempts to free him by Russian troops, in November 1838, the Nogai prince Tembulat Karamurzin managed to kidnap the prisoner from the Kabardians.

In 1848, the Sovremennik magazine published an article by an unknown author, “Hunting for bison in the Caucasus in the Bolshoi Zelenchuk Gorge.” This article was delivered to the editors of Sovremennik by Moscow University professor K. F. Roulier. He provided the article with a short preface, in which he says that it was written by “an educated Russian traveler who spent too many 10 years in the Caucasus and himself participated in this hunt, which no one has succeeded in doing.”

The article itself describes a random hunt (which, as the author says, no Russian had ever been to) for wild bulls, “adombeys,” as the Abkhazians call them. The author saw here a whole herd of Adombeys, consisting of a huge shaggy bull, several cows and calves. The bull was killed. The author writes the following about him:

“When we ran up to our prey, which was dying in its death throes, I saw that this adombey was a real bison (Bos urus). ... In appearance he looks like an ordinary bull: the head is large, the eyes are small and deeply depressed; the horns are short and thick; the front part of the body, i.e. the head, chest and shoulders, is covered with shaggy hair; there is a rather long beard under the lower jaw; on the back of the body the hair is short and shiny, the legs are low and sinewy, the tail is not very long; coat color is dark brown. The killed bison was very tall: its length with its head extended up to 10 feet, its height was slightly more than 2 arshins. Having removed the skin from it and stretched it, we made a canopy under which all 7 people could fit.” Further, the author writes: “I learned about adombeys or bison from the Abkhazians that they are found not only in the Bolshoi Zelenchuk gorges, but also in pine forests growing near the eternal snows of the main ridge, in the gorges of Urup and Bolshaya Laba, but nowhere else.”

In 1864, “Memoirs of a Caucasian Officer,” signed with the letter “T,” was published in the Russian Messenger. For old Caucasians, the name of the author was not a mystery. Everyone unmistakably recognized him as Baron Fedor Fedorovich Tornau. In these “Memoirs” the story from “Contemporary” was reproduced in full (with the exception of some details), which suggests that F. F. Tornau was also its author.

It should be noted that the publications of Nordmann and Tornau were preceded by one very important event. In 1836, the commander of the Separate Caucasian Corps and the chief administrator of the civil part and border affairs in the Caucasus, Baron G. V. Rosen, donated the skin of a Caucasian bison to the Imperial Academy of Sciences. This allowed the scientific community to recognize the existence of bison in the Caucasus as undeniable, because all previous news about the Caucasian bison, which we described above, comes down to simple stories and not even eyewitness accounts.

G. V. Rosen

On December 21, 1836, at the Meeting of the Academy of Sciences, Academician K. M. Behr read a note about a comparison of the sent skin of a Caucasian bison with a stuffed Belovezhsk bison, which was in the academic museum. This comparison boiled down to the following points:

Thus, Academician Baer was finally able, on the basis of the skin sent to him by Baron von Rosen, to verify that the Caucasian wild bull and bison, although they differ in some features from each other, can still be recognized as identical. However, a final decision on this issue was postponed until new evidence was received.

K. M. Baer

In 1864, General Count N.I. Evdokimov, a hero of the Caucasian War, visited the Moscow Zoological Garden and promised to obtain a Caucasian bison for Moscow. On behalf of the count, Colonel Aglintsov twice went to the mountains to hunt bison, but his attempts to catch the animal were unsuccessful, although he managed to see herds of bison of 40 and 60 heads from afar. Soon after this, professor of zoology at Moscow University S. A. Usov, who also held the position of director of the Moscow Zoological Garden, turned to Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, who was then the Viceroy in the Caucasus, with a request to send a skin or live Caucasian bison as a gift to the Moscow Zoological Garden.

Already in 1867, on the land of the Zelenchuk district in vast pine forests in the upper reaches of the river. Urup resident of the Kuva village Batyr-Girey Adzhiev caught a one-year-old male bison. On May 2, 1867, he was presented in the city of Batalpashinsk to His Highness the Viceroy of the Caucasus, and then sent to Karachay, where the climate was more consistent with the climate of his homeland. Some time later, this bison was taken to the Moscow Zoological Garden. This little tooth received the name Kazbich. Unfortunately, information about its participation in reproduction and life expectancy has not been preserved.

Some researchers (Satunin, Turkin) questioned the very existence of a living bison caught in the Caucasus and brought to Moscow. However, the famous naturalist and researcher of the Caucasus N. Ya. Dinnik, being a student of Professor S. A. Usova, confirms that the bison was indeed sent and placed in the Moscow Zoological Garden:

“I myself had to see only two Caucasian bison: one sent from the Caucasus in the late sixties to the Moscow Zoological Garden, and the other in the city of Batalpashinsk, from the late N.G. Petrusevich. The last of these bison was very tame, walked with the cows into the field and returned home again. I don’t know what fate befell him later.”

Following the capture of the young bison, other equally valuable artifacts began to appear in the scientific community. In August 1866, the famous naturalist and founder of the Caucasian Museum G.I. Radda was instructed to place in the museum a bison skin, which the head of the Kuban region, Count Sumarokov-Elston, presented in Borjom for consideration by the Viceroy of the Caucasus. As G.I. Radde recalled, it was “the skin of a young undergrown male killed in the spring; she shed so much that on her neck and chest the winter fur, like felt, was not attached to the skin itself, but was only barely adhered to by separate, thin, sprouted summer hairs.”

G.I. Radde did not take care of this skin for long - in April 1867, his request to Count Sumarokov-Elston to get, if possible, an old male with winter coverings was fulfilled. The new skin belonged to “a not very old bull in summer wool with a very thin and short mane on the chest and neck. The animal's hooves were higher, but smaller than the hooves of the Belovezhsk bison. This bison was caught in the area of ​​the river's sources. Zelenchuk". Until 1892, this was the only stuffed Caucasian bison kept in the Caucasian Museum.

Stuffed Caucasian bison. Zoological Museum of the RAS

And only when the skin of this huge beast was delivered by mail to Tiflis, G.I. Radde was able to make sure that “the Caucasian bison, although it has much shorter hair on the neck and front of the body than the Lithuanian and especially American bison, however belongs to the same species as the other two."

Skeleton of a Caucasian bison. Zoological Museum of the RAS

Thus, if back in the early 1860s. the totality of information about the Caucasian bison was such that the professor of Moscow University S. A. Usov, recognizing the proven existence of some kind of wild bull in the Caucasus, pointed out that there was not sufficient data to recognize this bull as a bison, and academician K. M. Behr , arguing with Usov, was inclined to believe that the controversial animal was still a bison, then sending a live bison to the Moscow Zoological Garden in 1867 and obtaining two bison skins, transferred in 1866-1867 to the Caucasian Museum, put an end to all doubts*.

Information about the supposed bison, which had previously reached from the Caucasus, after 1867 received a certain meaning, and soon this information began to be steadily replenished, thanks to the excursions of naturalists undertaken from time to time to the area occupied by the bison.

In the second half of the 19th century, more and more news about the Caucasian bison began to appear in the press. Thus, Academician F. F. Brand, summarizing all the data he knew about bison, in his notes provides valuable information received from Dr. G. I. Radde and indicating that the Caucasian bison continues to exist:

“In 1865, during a trip to Karachay, Dr. Radde learned that in the areas located to the west of the Marukh glacier and known among the locals as Zaadan and Erhuz *, in the vast high-mountain pine forests there are bison, which are found there in herds in 7-10 goals".

F. F. Brandt

An interesting recollection of G. Sandetsky, who in July 1862 was among the members of the commission inspecting the routes leading from Abkhazia to the northern slope of the Caucasus Mountains.

The commission's guides were Abkhazians. From Sukhum to Pskhu, through Mount Dou, the commission proceeded first along the Gum gorge, and then without roads, along steep ravines. From Pskhu, climbing steep mountains and descending from them, the detachment proceeded northeast, to the source of the Bzyb River, and from here turned northwest, along the Main Ridge

Caucasus Mountains, along the high fertile Bzyb Plain. On the seventh day after leaving Sukhum, the commission spent the night at Mount Beya-Chkharparta near the Tsagerker Pass, through which they then crossed to the northern slope of the Caucasus Mountains.

During the transition through the Main Ridge, the Abkhaz guides treated the commission members to bison and tur meat, as well as fermented milk. This provision, as Sandetsky recalls, “was brought by shepherds looking after the flocks of the guides.”

However, the most important thing in the article is his remark that “Abkhazia extends beyond the ridge of the Caucasus Mountains on the basis that the Abkhazians graze their herds in the gorges of this ridge; there they have the best hunting for bison, aurochs, deer and other animals." This indicates that already in the 1860s, bison were concentrated mainly on the northern slope of the Main Range, and on the southern slope they if we met, it was only sporadically*.

Regarding encounters of bison on the southern slope of the Main Range, D.P. Filatov noted that “we have only fragmentary data on isolated finds.” Let's try to look at these data.

In July 1878, Y. K. Vasiliev visited the Pseashkha pass area. Having risen there in the evening from the Pslukha valley, the detachment stopped for the night in the upper reaches of Urushten, where they discovered traces of bison. Early in the morning, at the foot of Mount Dzitaku, mountaineer guides took Vasiliev out to see a whole herd:

“An old bison of enormous size is basking in a standing position in the rays of the rising sun, serenely hanging his head; Near it, at a distance, in the same position are four smaller specimens, presumably females, for a calf is frolicking near each one; somewhat to the side there are two more adult specimens in a recumbent position. I had to enjoy this picture for about 10 minutes... But then, on the left side, something clicked in the air, instantly the entire herd with extraordinary speed and dexterity rushed to the Psegashka pass; an unsuccessful shot by a highlander brings the animals back; the herd in an indirect direction runs into a rocky ledge 4-5 arshins; there was a moment when it seemed that all the bison would break their legs, but that was not the case, with even greater speed they jump from the ledge and rush past the dumbfounded guard, who accidentally fired a shot when his gun fell... The bison disappeared within the district.”

Also in his memoirs, Y. K. Vasiliev mentions that in June 1877, one bison was killed by a highlander near Babukova aul.

In the summer of 1882, the upper reaches of Urushten were visited by a hunter, the famous entomologist A. A. Stark. Stark lived for a long time in Uch-Der near Sochi, holding the position of manager of the estate of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and traveling through the surrounding mountains. In 1882 span class=”star” he climbed the Pseashkha pass and made a number of excursions in the surrounding area: he reached the mouth of the modern Sinaya River, visited the Dzitaku valley, explored the valley of the river. Cold and described its glaciers. It is precisely when rising to the upper reaches of the river. Cold and met Stark's bison squad:

“... while we are discussing, just at this moment we notice some huge animal. “Dombay,” shouts Tlyahodyg. Probably he really is; but it’s impossible to say with accuracy due to the range of the distance. All you can see is something very big. Clearly not a deer; and there are no other large animals here, except deer and bison. The whole team becomes incredibly animated, and the animation has an exciting effect on me as well. Now none of us doubts that this is indeed a bison. He will stop, then start again. He must be grazing. He, of course, doesn’t see us, and since the wind blows from him towards us, he won’t hear or smell us. But getting there is much further than we think. You need to make a long descent, then walk along a sharp ridge, with a deep lake on one side and huge cliffs on the other; further, in order not to be noticed by the bison that walks behind the lake, it is necessary to make a large, extremely dangerous climb, all the time over the cliff. This entire path is clearly visible and should take at least an hour, or maybe two, of time; and the bison may leave during this time; and the sun is already well past noon. After calmly thinking about this, I still decide to go back. But my companions still want to experience happiness. I don’t bother them, and we part.”

However, while the hunters were creeping up on the bison, a thick fog descended on them, and they were forced to retreat and return to camp empty-handed.

In 1887, the huntsman of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich F.I. Kratky mentioned in a report devoted to the study of the hunting riches of the mountainous zone of the Kuban region in the interfluve of the Belaya and Bolshaya Laba rivers that “bison were shot on the southern slope of the Caucasus ridge, on the so-called “Red Polyana” ; they were even seen several together in Abkhazia.”

G. I. Radde

In 1894, Dr. G. I. Radde made a mountain journey from Psebay to Sochi. His route ran first along Malaya Laba, then through the Alous Isthmus it descended into the Urushten valley and through the Pseashkho pass to Krasnaya Polyana. During the trip, Radde paid special attention to the issue of finding bison in the mountains of the Kuban region and the Black Sea province. Thus, he indicates that he saw fresh bison tracks in the upper reaches of Urushten. At the same time, he managed to obtain information from local hunters about the migration of bison herds within the Kuban Mountains; he also mentions two cases when single old individuals of bison penetrated the southern slope and reached almost the very coast: in 1883 such a case was recorded in the river valley Hosts*, and in 1893 the animal was seen in the vicinity of the village of Vardane, where it entered from the valley of the river. Shahe.

Radde includes the upper reaches of the river as bison areas. Belaya, as well as the valleys of the Kishi and Shishi rivers. He describes an interesting case when a herd of bison, totaling twenty heads, made its way from the wild upper reaches of the river. Belaya in the upper reaches of the Shakhe River and was forced to spend the winter (winter passes were an insurmountable barrier for all living things) on high mountain pastures near the former Circassian village of Babukov, which was abandoned at that time. Radde suggested that the single bulls seen on the coast strayed from this herd at one time.

Based on the results of this trip, Radde compiled a map, indicating on it the main habitats of the Caucasian bison. Later, this map was published in Russian and, in a slightly revised form, was included in the “Collections of the Caucasian Museum”, published by G. I. Radde. However, the original 1894 map contains more significant details and important details.

Map by G. I. Radde on the distribution of Caucasian bison (1894) Map by G. I. Radde on the distribution of Caucasian bison (1899)

In 1895, geologist V.I. Vorobyov mentioned bison tracks. He points out that during the study of the Chekhashkha-Bzysh-Chura mountain range, on the slopes of the Mt. Chura massif, “in the thickets of ferns in the gullies there were a lot of traces of boar and bear, and in one place we found completely fresh traces of bison, which probably shortly before our The parishes grazed here, since in one place the earth, dug up by a hoof, had not yet had time to dry out... Judging by the tracks, there were three bison, one of which was a calf.”

In 1902, N. Ya. Dinnik visited the upper reaches of the Mzymta. During the trip, he finally decided for himself the question of finding the bison in the Mzymta valley.

“One forest worker... told me,” writes Dinnik, “that bison are not found in the Mzymta valley. I knew about this before and wrote about it; asking him now, I just wanted to hear confirmation of my opinion once again. The same forest worker told me that during all the time of his wanderings through the forests of the Mzymta valley, he only saw traces of bison twice, and both times in the upper reaches of Puziko. He is sure that the bison that left these tracks accidentally came here from the Kuban region through the very low Pseashkho pass (6870 lb.) or through the upper reaches of the Belaya, to the west of Shugus, where the mountains are even lower. From the tracks one could notice that the bison did not stay here for long and, probably, went back to the places they constantly inhabited, i.e. to the Urushten valley, to Kisha, etc.” .

In the autumn of 1903, zoologist V.A. Razevich traveled to the mountains of Abkhazia, to the southern slope of the Main Caucasus Range. One of the objectives of the trip was to clarify the location of the bison in the valleys of the Bzybi, Lashipse and Avadhara rivers, as well as in the adjacent gorges on the southern slope of the Main Range. Based on the results of the expedition, Razevich comes to the following conclusion:

“...in the basin of the Bzybi River the bison is no longer found, or that it only rarely crosses the Main Range and is generally so rare in Abkhazia, i.e. in the present Sukhumi district of the Kutaisi province, that the Abkhazian shepherds themselves do not meet his; in winter, this entire area is completely deserted, and therefore there is no one to observe it.”

At the same time, Razevig is firmly convinced that in ancient times the bison was found in the basin of the Bzybi River, and mainly in the valleys and gorges of the rivers flowing into it from the right side, since “the natural conditions of its existence are here and in the valleys and gorges of the upper reaches of the Laba and Zelenchuk very similar."

The cases listed above allowed the later bison researcher I. Bashkirov to conclude in 1939 that “The Main Range cannot be mistaken for the southern border of the Caucasian bison region for the middle of the last century: the bison lived then, undoubtedly, in the upper reaches of the Shakhe, Sochi, and Mzymta rivers , Psou, Bzybi, and maybe also in the upper reaches of Kodor and Ingur."

Stuffed Caucasian bison kept in the Caucasian Museum (1898)

In 1868, the mountainous part of the Kuban region, on the initiative of S. A. Usov, was visited by a representative of the Moscow Acclimatization Society, zoologist A. F. Vinogradov. Based on the results of his own research, he expressed doubt about Nordman’s instructions that bison lived along the swampy banks of the Kuban, while he gave full confidence to the stories he had heard, according to which until the fifties of the 19th century, bison spread north beyond the fir strip of river valleys. He had information that “salt licks near the confluence of Marukh with Aksaut and salt licks near the confluence of Kefara and Bayalon (the basin of the Big and Small Zelenchuks) were visited by bison.” The head of the Zelenchuk mountain district told Vinogradov that when the Caucasus was not yet under Russian rule, bison reached the mouths of the Aksauta, Zelenchuk, Urup and Laba rivers. A.F. Vinogradov himself wrote the following about the spread of bison in 1868:

“Currently, the distribution of bison in the Caucasus is very limited; he lives in the upper reaches of all rivers that begin in that part of the mountain strip that borders in the east with the Aksauta gorge and in the west with the Shakhgireevsky gorge, i.e., the Labenka gorge (Mal. Laba); in other words, the bison lives in the upper reaches of the river basins: Aksaut (Maly Zelenchuk), Zelenchuk (Big Zelenchuk), Urup and Laba. To the east of the Aksaut valley, i.e., on the ridge separating the Aksaut and Teberda valleys, the bison is not found, and on Aksaut itself it was extremely rare, so it would be more correct to put the mountains between Askaut and Marukh as the eastern border of its distribution. To the west of Labenok, bison have also not been found recently. The northern limit of the distribution of the bison in the Caucasus can be approximately placed at the northern limit of the coniferous belt of the mountain strip, and the southern limit at the southern slope of the main ridge.”

In the last third of the 19th century, the famous naturalist N. Ya. Dinnik carried out active research in the Caucasus. He makes a number of major trips to remote and little-explored corners of the Caucasus. As a result of his expeditions, N. Ya Dinnik collected a significant amount of information about the Caucasian bison, mainly related to the issue of the distribution of this animal in the Caucasus.

N. Ya. Dinnik

For example, Dinnik, almost a hundred years after Gyldenstedt, visited the Olisay-dom cave in Digoria, where he discovered 19 bison skulls. Based on this finding, he concluded:

“...in former times, bison were distributed throughout the Caucasus over a much larger area than at present. The discovery of their skulls in the Olisay-dom cave undoubtedly indicates that bison once lived in Digoria (Vladikavkaz district, Terek region). In fact, the almost complete absence of chamois, aurochs and roe deer skulls in the cave, as well as the stories of the inhabitants of Zadelesk, show that donations were brought to Olysai House only from nearby areas; therefore, the presence of bison skulls (19 pieces) in it should serve as proof that this animal was previously found near Zadelesk or, at least, in the forests of Digoria. Questioning the old people of Zadelesye, I learned that none of them were contemporary with the bison, but that they had all heard from their fathers and grandfathers about the enormous size of the beast, about its strength, strength and about hunting for it. They said, for example, that it was very difficult to kill him, that they shot bison with iron bullets or simply pieces of iron, they even said that, feeling a great shortage of lead, they put short sticks made of hard wood into their guns and shot the beast with them at close range . Proof of the presence of bison in these forests is also the name of the Dombayta ravine, located in Digoria.”

Pointing out that this gully is too steep, rocky and precipitous for such a large and heavy animal as the bison to live in it, Dinnik writes that “it is much more likely that the bison lived somewhat lower, in those vast forests that are located north of Zadelesk; in addition, taking into account how high they rise in the mountain forests of the upper reaches of Laba and Urup, I am ready to admit that they lived above Zadelesk along the Urukh valley, for example, in the forests near Styr-Digor and in the side gorges closest to it ... The skulls found by Gyldenstedt in caves near Urukh also indicate that bison were once found in the forests of Digoria. The name of the Dombay-Olgen* gorge, located in the upper reaches of Teberda, indicates that in former times bison lived here, that is, next door to Elbrus.”

In 1884, in the article “Mountains and Gorges of the Kuban Region,” Dinnik clarifies the information received by A.F. Vinogradov and points out that “in recent years, in the summer, there were no bison at all in the upper reaches of the Urup... In winter, according to the stories of Kuvva hunters, they are also found in the upper reaches of Urup. The Karachays claim that bison also enter the upper reaches of Bolshoy Zelenchuk, namely the Irkyz valley.” In the valley of the Bolshaya Laba in an area called Zagedan, Dinnik himself saw bison tracks several times.

As for the supposed eastern border of the distribution of bison, in 1880 V. Lazarius expressed the opinion that bison are found in the upper reaches of Aksaut and Marukh. However, he put forward his assumption only on the basis that the upper reaches of Bolshoi Zelenchuk, Laba and Urup, with the resettlement of the highlanders to Turkey, lost all population and now the number of bison in this area should increase. However, Dinnik completely disagreed with this. “I am well acquainted with these places,” he wrote, “and I can safely say that there are no bison in them at all, and there are no such vast forests where they could live.” Thus, Dinnik limited the border of the bison’s habitat in the east with the Bolshoi Zelenchuk River.

Dinnik considered the western border of the distribution of bison to be the river. Belaya: “To the west, the area of ​​distribution of the bison stretches through the upper reaches of the Malaya Laba, Khodza to Belaya... I was told that in the huge forests around Mount Abago, located not far from the sources of the Belaya River, there are so many bison as anywhere in the Caucasus.” Confirmation of the existence of bison in those places can be the fact that the manager of the Grand Duke's hunts F.I. Kratky, traveling in 1887 through the mountains of the Kuban region in the upper reaches of the Urushtena, Malaya Laba and Kisha rivers, mentions that he saw under Mount Pshekish bison tracks* .

Zoologist K.N. Rossikov, who in the summer of 1888 made a trip for zoogeographical research to the northwestern Caucasus, to the mountainous part of the Kuban region, did not agree with Dinnik’s opinion about the boundaries of the distribution of Caucasian bison. He crossed the Malaya and Bolshaya Laba valleys, but especially carefully explored the Zagedan valley. During his entire journey, K. N. Rossikov met a live bison only once “at the headwaters of the Umpyrya River, a tributary of the Malaya Laba, on the border of forest vegetation.”

In addition, he mentions that “on the night from July 18 to 19, 150 fathoms from the bivouac, on the Umpyr tract, through the edge of a dense forest, to which a small clearing adjoins... a small herd of bison passed. This place was all knocked out, the ground was dug up by hooves, there was fresh droppings right there, indisputable proof of their presence. On the same day, on the left bank of the river. Malaya Laba, in the same tract, I found about two dozen recent tracks of bison that passed into the remote part of the river gorge. Achipsta, a tributary of the river. Malaya Laba on the left."

In the Zagedan Valley, Rossikov also finds traces of a significant number of bison; By the way, he came across their roosts very high up, in the alpine region, and he saw direct traces of bison even on the firn glacier at the Sancharo Pass at the source of the Bolshaya Laba on the Main Caucasus Range.

Speaking about the northern border, Rossikov denies the possibility of finding bison in the river valley. Hodz, as Dinnik claimed in 1884. Rossikov, while in the village of Bagovskaya, questioned local hunters, “the best and most conscientious,” and they all claimed that bison were not found in Khodju. This disagreement can most likely be explained by the fact that by 1888 bison from the river valley. The Khodz had already left, and earlier, at the time to which Dinnik’s data relates, they still met there. This is very likely if we take into account the proximity of the river’s sources. Walk to the left tributaries of the river. Urushten, in the place where Urushten flows from east to west. In some of these tributaries, Professor D. Filatov met bison even during the winter expedition of 1910. It is possible that they previously moved into the river basin. Khodz east of the town of Shapka (Achkha).

In 1899, N. Ya. Dinnik dwells in more detail on the issue of the distribution of the Caucasian bison. In the article “A few words about the Caucasian bison,” which was the result of several of his trips in recent years to bison areas, Dinnik comes to a sad conclusion:

“Currently, bison live in more or less significant numbers only in one part of the Maikop department of the Kuban region, namely in the upper reaches of the Belaya River, which flows into the Kuban, and in the upper reaches of Urushten, which flows into the Malaya Laba. This area is 50 miles long and 30-40 miles wide. Dinnik further confirms his earlier opinion about the absence of bison on the river. Marukh says that they also left Zelenchuk. They also disappeared from Urup, although they were still found here in the mid-eighties of the 19th century. The Zagedan Valley, where Dinnik encountered many bison tracks in 1884, by the end of the 19th century bison began to visit “only from time to time and, moreover, it seems, very rarely. In the valleys of Damkhurts and Mamkhurts, which flow into the Bolshaya Laba on the western side, traces of bison are often found even now. Recently the huntsmen of the Kuban hunt also saw them there.”

In the Malaya Laba valley, bison settled along its tributaries - the valleys of the Achipsta and Umpyr rivers. In the valley of Urushten and its tributaries - the Mastakan and Alous rivers, bison, according to Dinik, “already live constantly and, moreover, in considerable numbers.” The most concentrated bison region includes Dinnik in the upper reaches of the Belaya, in particular the upper reaches of its right tributaries - the valleys of the Kisha, Molchepa and Abago (Bezymyanka) rivers. In the sources of Pshekha, located near the sources of the river. White bison and bison also flowing from under Fisht are no longer found. Only once, as the hunters of the Samur village told Dinnik, in the upper reaches of Pshekha they saw two bison. “Without a doubt,” Dinnik believes, “the bison wandered here quite by accident from the upper reaches of the Belaya River.”

When looking at these data, we can notice one contradiction. A.F. Vinogradov in 1868 considered the river to be the western border of the bison region. Malaya Laba. Meanwhile, Mr. Y. Dinnik, who began his excursions in the 1870s, points to the Malaya Laba and Belaya basins as the centers where bison are most numerous. The explanation for this is most likely that the basin of the Belaya and its tributaries, the Kishi, Shishi, Abago (Bezymyanka) and Molchepa rivers, even in the time of Dinnik, was a remote, rarely visited place where the beast was disturbed relatively little, and in the time of Vinogradov, hunters they did not penetrate there at all and could not know whether there were bison there.

J. St. Littledale

By the way, it was bison hunting (along with livestock grazing and forest cutting) that served as one of the main reasons for the rapid reduction of its range. This hunt was carried out first by the local Circassian and Abkhazian population, and later, after the Circassian tribes were evicted to Turkey and the Kuban Plain, settlers from Russia took their place. “With special zeal,” wrote N. Ya. Dinnik in 1909, “the new inhabitants of the Caucasus, who settled in the former Circassian villages, also exterminated noble and rare animals.” In the 1870s, General S.A. Sheremetev, who later became the appointed ataman of the Kuban Cossack army and the head of the Kuban region, hunted between the Belaya and Malaya Laba rivers. Officers of units located nearby also hunted here, but they failed to get any bison. In 1885, it was planned to send an expedition to the mountains of the Kuban region to hunt bison, but this expedition did not take place.

One of the famous cases of successful bison hunting is associated with the name of the Englishman George Littledale. Three times, in 1887, 1888 and 1891, the persistent athlete came to the mountains of the Kuban region, and only the third time he managed to achieve his goal. In the summer of 1891, having again arrived in the Kuban region with his wife, and having received permission to kill the bison, Littledale sent for his previous guides: but the old man, who had a surprisingly light gait and keen eyes, went to Turkey with several hundred of his fellow tribesmen. The Lezgin Labazan became the hunter’s new guide, who ensured a successful hunt for the athlete. Littledale killed a bull and a cow and carefully preserved the skins and skeleton of the animals, which he later donated to the British Museum. And the fame of his guide spread far beyond the Kuban mountains; Later, even Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, the owner of the Kuban hunt, resorted to Labazan’s services.

Skulls of Caucasian Zurs killed by J. Littledale (late 19th century)

An interesting portrait of Labazan is given by Olenich-Genenko in his memoirs: “Four kilometers from Maryenkina there was the farm of the Circassian hunter Labazan. He and his blood friend Belyakov built booths at animal fords across Kisha. The hunters will sit in one or another booth and beat the animal right in the water, during transitions. In their booths they always hung smoked and dried hams of bison, deer, wild boar, bears and the skins of various animals. The old people say that Labazan and Belyakov killed up to a hundred bison. One Labazan shot eighty bison. Although hunting for them and deer was strictly prohibited, Labazan was not touched, because he brought hams and skins to the ataman of the department, and was a hunting guide for visitors from the capital... “He was a tall, powerful old Circassian,” recalls Bessonny. – Labazan still took part in the war of 1864. The hunter was dashing. In summer and winter, wearing only homemade stockings, without a hat, in the cold and the wind goes straight through the snow and through the water. There is still a Labazanova trail to the Dudugush ridge. His friend is old man Belyakov, also a wonderful hunter. It happened that they would quarrel, separate, and then wander through the forest, looking for each other. Labazan lived mostly in Maryenka Glade, he only came to Khamyshki to rest and have a drink, and then went back to the forest...”

The phenomenon of the existence of the Grand Duke's Kuban hunt should be mentioned separately here, since it was it that played a decisive role in the preservation of the aboriginal bison of the Caucasus at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.

Kuban hunting. In the center - Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich (late 19th century)

This hunt was organized in 1888 by the Grand Dukes Peter Nikolaevich and Georgiy Mikhailovich Romanov, who received the right to hunt on an area of ​​about 480 thousand dessiatines in the forest dachas of the Ministry of State Property and the Kuban Regional Military Administration. The boundaries of the leased area ran: in the south - along the Main Caucasus Ridge; in the east - along the Bolshaya Laba River; in the west - along the Belaya River; and in the north - along the Front Range.

Caucasian bison killed by A. N. Demidov (1898)

The beginning of the actual hunting within the specified limits was made in the same 1888. Having personally seen the incredible abundance of game in the mountains they had passed through, the princes became familiar with all the difficulties of hunting in these places, the main one of which was the lack of good communications. Having also become convinced of some shortcomings in the organization of hunting, they outlined an extensive program for the thorough organization of Kuban hunting. But due to the serious long-term illness of Georgy Mikhailovich, and later Pyotr Nikolaevich, they had to abandon their plan for an indefinite period. Kuban hunting was virtually abandoned until the right to use it was acquired by Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich in 1892. The impressions the Prince experienced from the Kuban hunt ensured its further prosperity.

As for the bison, “a large staff of rangers, skilled forest rangers and game wardens, substantial costs for the fight against predators and other measures - all guaranteed the successful reproduction of the animal, which was shot only by a few during hunts held once a year,” writes Bashkirov.

The Grand Duke appointed several dozen very experienced huntsmen, mostly residents of neighboring villages, who were supposed to protect his hunting grounds from poachers.

Even N.Ya. Dinnik writes that “since all these places have been rented for hunting for several years by His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, I, always traveling with a gun, in order to avoid any misunderstandings when meeting with the rangers protecting these places from poachers, asked the deceased F.I. Kratkoy, who temporarily managed the Kuban hunt of the Grand Duke, allowed me free passage to all rented places and received such permission.”

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich

The huntsman guards had broad powers, but themselves only had permission to shoot wild animals and wild boars. It is noteworthy that “to shoot bison, the hunting of which was prohibited throughout the entire Russian Empire, Grand Duke Sergius Mikhailovich himself had to take special permission from His Majesty.” As a matter of fact, it was the conservation of bison that was one of the tasks of managing leased lands. P.I. Slashchevsky, quoting one of the German articles, writes: “Hunting manager E.K. Jutner, an Austrian forester, using the experience gained in his homeland, organized the expedient protection of the bison. During more than 25 years of service with the Grand Duke, he managed to increase the number of bison by more than 200 heads.” And further: “In 1909, when I first visited Jutner at his place of work in the small picturesque Transcaucasian resort of Borjomi, he proudly informed me that his bison herd had reached a decent number, around 600 pieces.”

In accordance with the strict hunting rules introduced by the Grand Duke, each of the invitees was allowed to kill no more than one bison, but no more than 5 in total per hunt. The last of the bison was killed in 1909 (this year the Kuban hunt ceased to exist) by a regular participant in the grand ducal hunts, state forester K. D. Ulagai, who subsequently donated the skeleton and skin of the killed bull to the Caucasian Museum in Tiflis.

During the entire Kuban hunt, only a little more than ten bison were killed:

• In 1891 J. St. Littledale – 2 bison.
• In 1895, V. A. Shilder - 1 bison, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich - 1 bison.
• In 1897, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich - 1 bison, Dr. Reyer - 2 bison.
• In 1898, Lieutenant A.N. Demidov - 1 bison.
• In 1900, Prince P. A. Oldenburgsky - 1 bison, Jägermeister M. V. Andreevsky - 1 bison.
• In 1909, state forester K.D. Ulagai – 1 bison.

Bison killed during the Kuban hunt (late 19th century)
Bison killed during the Kuban hunt (late 19th century)

In addition, in different years, rangers of the Kuban hunt caught two Caucasian bison calves in the mountains for scientific purposes. Their fate is different.

The first of them was caught in the Kishi valley in May 1899 by the Kuban hunting ranger A. Teleusov. He took him to Psebay, where he handed him over to the hunter Schreyer, with whom the little bison lived for three months, until the specially sent chief huntsman Nevrli arrived from Belovezhskaya Pushcha to pick him up. In Belovezhskaya Pushcha, this little bison became completely at home, however, according to the memoirs of Professor G.P. Kartsov, he was much smaller than his Belovezhskaya relatives: “He was never sick, but he couldn’t be called completely healthy either. He is always thin, his fur is not abundant, his movements are sluggish... The manager of the forest, Mr. Nevrli, considers this four-year-old bison so weak that he doubts his ability to become a breeder.” This little bison received the nickname “Kazan”, but nothing is known about his further fate, since the entire Belovezhskaya archive was destroyed in the First World War.

Caucasian bison Kazan (1902)

The second case is given by M.A. Zablotsky in “The Bison Inhibition Project” (1938):

“In May 1907, the huntsman Smeyanov caught a bison in the salt lick between the Guzeripl clearing and the Abago Pasture, in the upper reaches of Tishkova Balka. The next day, the calf was delivered to the village of Psebayskaya (where the Kuban Hunt Department was then located), and from there soon to Belovezhskaya Pushcha. In 1908, “Caucasus”, as the bison was called (Kaukasus, No. 100 of the Genealogy Book of the Bison), came to the famous wild animal trader Karl Hagenbeck, from 02.br/ 03. 1908 he was on the farm of Count Arnim, and fell 26 02. 1925 in Hamburg. During the 17 years of its life, “Kavkaz” was repeatedly used as a sire when crossing with Belovezhsky bison and left significant offspring in the amount of 7 calves, including 3 bulls and 4 heifers.”

Photograph of a Caucasian bison (E.K. Jutner, 1900s)

Due to the rapid decline in the range of the Caucasian bison, the scientific community has recognized the need to take up its study in earnest. The first and last large-scale expedition to collect material for the study of the aboriginal Caucasian bison was undertaken in 1909-1911 by Professor D. P. Filatov*. Funds for travel in 1909-1910. allocated by Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, and in 1911 by the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

In 1909 and 1910 D. Filatov, preparator Petukhov and guide from local residents G. Karitichenko walked around all the most important bison areas of the former Kuban hunting. They visited the Kishi valley, in the Kitayskaya Balka, walked along Shisha, along Kholodnaya, along Malchepe and Abago (Bezymyanka). Everywhere the expedition encountered numerous traces of bison and themselves; Professor Filatov took photographs of bison areas and even the bison themselves. After the Kishi valley, Filatov entered the Malaya Laba basin, where he explored the tributaries of the Urushten - Chelipsinka, Bambachka, Alous and Mestyk.

On his next trip, this time in the winter of 1909-1910, Professor Filatov went with the goal of obtaining a male and female bison in winter plumage for the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences. He succeeded quite well. He caught the old male in December 1909 in the Kishi Valley, and the female was shot by huntsman Ivan Krutenko in the Shishi Valley in January 1911. D.P. Filatov made his third trip in the spring and summer of 1911. During this time, he thoroughly studied the lifestyle and some biological characteristics of bison, which he reflected in his report.

Photograph of a Caucasian bison (D. P. Filatov, 1909)
Photograph of a Caucasian bison (D. P. Filatov, 1909)

Based on the results of the expeditions, Professor Filatov compiled a map of the distribution of bison, from which it followed that in his time, i.e. By 1912, the range of bison was concentrated in the interfluve of the Belaya and Malaya Laba rivers, in the most remote places where human economic activity had not yet penetrated.

In 1906, the Rada of the Kuban Cossack Army decided to divide, at the end of the lease on September 1, 1909, the territory of the Grand Duke's Hunt and, in general, the military lands of the mountain strip of the Kuban region between 135 villages for economic (timber, hunting and pasture) needs.

In 1907, Christopher (Khachatur) Georgievich Shaposhnikov, already a well-known naturalist-researcher by that time in scientific circles, was appointed to the post of forester of the Belorechensky forestry of the Kuban army. By that time, the Rada of the Kuban Cossack Army had passed a resolution on the division of the Grand Duke's lease into allotments for Cossack villages upon the expiration of the lease. This would mean the complete extermination of the bison.

In 1909, in scientific circles they increasingly began to talk about the need to protect and preserve the Caucasian bison, which, with the cessation of the Kuban hunt, was left without protection (according to information from the former manager of the hunting grounds, Grand Duke Yutner, the herd of bison in 1909 was determined by a round number of 600 heads) .

Kh. G. Shaposhnikov began the fight for the organization of a reserve on the territory of the Kuban hunting. In 1909, he sent a letter to the Academy of Sciences with this proposal. The main reason for the conservation of this territory was the preservation of the Caucasian mountain bison. In his letter, Shaposhnikov also outlined the boundaries of the reserve: Cossack forest dachas - Malolabinskaya, Khamyshevskaya, Mezmayskaya, state forest dachas - Malolabinskaya, Tkhachskaya and Sakhrayskaya. He wrote that “the Circassians have long had a “sacred grove,” or reserve, where it was forbidden to cut down trees and hunt animals and birds. This grove was located on the left bank of the Belaya, opposite the village of Khanskaya."

Kh. Shaposhnikov’s letter formed the basis of the report of the director of the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Nasonov, which he delivered at a meeting of the physics and mathematics department of the Academy on April 29, 1909.

“You can be sure that as soon as the Cossacks begin to use the plots of land that belong to them, the rapid disappearance of the bison will begin, and you can be sure that in 2-3 years all that will remain of the bison will be only a memory and the small number of skins and bones that have been preserved in Museums,” said Academician Nasonov in his report. He was right. After 1909, “the poachers became so bold and daring that they almost stopped paying attention to both the forest guards and the rangers protecting the game, and sometimes in droves they went into the forests to hunt... They killed bison just to kill, and their corpses were thrown to be devoured by wild beasts." The lease began “for the establishment of winter quarters and farmsteads of a mass of clearings in the valleys of mountain rivers near their headwaters, as well as in general in the lower zone of the mountains, i.e. in places where bison and other mountain game descend in snowy winters."

In this regard, the meeting decided to initiate a petition to establish an Interdepartmental Commission “to develop measures for the conservation of the Caucasian bison by declaring the mountainous strip of the Kuban region a protected area.”

Thus, on July 1, 1909, on the basis of the Highest Command, which was preceded by a report from the Minister of Public Education, a Commission was formed at the Imperial Academy of Sciences under the chairmanship of His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich to develop measures for the conservation of the Caucasian bison. Recognizing that the best way to achieve this goal would be to declare a protected mountain strip of the Kuban region, where this rare ungulate is found, the Commission made its assumptions about the establishment of the Caucasian State Reserve in this strip.

According to the draft regulations on this reserve developed by the Commission, it was planned as an institution designed to preserve “for eternity in the primitive integrity of the local Caucasian nature with its representatives of the plant and animal kingdoms, especially bison.” The territory of the reserve was supposed to include three state-owned dachas: Malo-Labinskaya, Tkhachskaya and Sakhrayskaya, as well as three Cossack dachas: Malo-Labinskaya, Khamysheiskaya and Mezmayskaya, moreover, the lands of the reserve were recognized as indivisible property constituting the unalienated property of the state, and could not be converted under any circumstances. agricultural crops, nor for mining. On the territory of the reserve it was prohibited to hunt and catch animals, birds and fish, as well as to carry hunting weapons and fishing gear. Along with this project, a measure of criminal liability was established for violation of the above prohibition, as well as for unauthorized logging in the reserve, for grazing livestock in it and for the production of any forestry, mining and other trades within its boundaries.

However, these proposals of the Commission aroused objections from interested departments and the Viceroy of His Imperial Majesty in the Caucasus. In particular, with regard to the size of the area of ​​the reserve, the Military Ministry declared the need to reduce the designed reserve by excluding from it the Mezmayskaya Cossack dacha, which was especially important for the development of local horse breeding and cattle breeding, and the Viceroy of His Imperial Majesty in the Caucasus spoke out against including in the reserve, in addition to the Mezmayskaya dacha, also Sakhrayskaya and Tkhachskaya dachas, since, in his opinion, there are no bison in these three areas, and in the northern part of the last two dachas there are settlements of Russian settlers.

Only on February 27, 1914, at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, the issue of creating and establishing the Caucasian State Reserve was considered, the main purpose of which was to carry out a set of measures to save and protect the Caucasian bison, the number of which began to steadily decline at the beginning of the 20th century. As a result, it was again decided to refer the above-mentioned issue to a special interdepartmental commission chaired by Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich.

This time, the Rada of the Kuban Cossack Army opposed the creation of the Caucasian Reserve, which did not want to include its lands in its composition. It also turned out that the government does not have “free” funds to organize the reserve. After some time, the interdepartmental commission disintegrated, and the issue of creating a reserve began to gradually fade away.

In 1915, the Russian Geographical Society again raised the question of organizing the Caucasian Nature Reserve before the tsarist government, and again another refusal was received. The resolution of the protracted issue of creating the Caucasian State Reserve in the Russian Empire was prevented by the military actions of the First World War, and later by the revolutionary movements that began in the country.

As S.A. Trepet notes, despite the fact that the high scientific value of this territory was fully appreciated by both the former and later Soviet governments, “practical protection of these places was only possible to organize in the mid-1920s. And over all these years, the Caucasian bison gradually disappeared."

In 1917, the number of bison, apparently, did not exceed 500. The appearance of shepherds with herds of livestock, lumberjacks, deserters and hunters armed with three-line rifles in the Kuban hunting territory after the 1917 revolution marked the last stage of the existence of the Caucasian bison. The civil war caused enormous damage to the bison population. Most of the animals were quickly killed for meat and skins, and in 1919 an epizootic broke out among the remaining animals, carried into the mountains by livestock. By 1920, there were no more than a hundred bison left on the territory of the future reserve.

“The civil war,” wrote M. Bashkirov, “although it closed access to the mountains for poachers and shepherds, since green, white, and red armed groups were hiding here, it did not stop the extermination of the beast: there was a lot of meat hiding around, and it appeared for they are almost the only food. But the destruction reached its apogee in the winter of 1920-1921, when General Khvostikov’s detachment, making its way to the Black Sea coast, failed to leave the Main Range and remained for the winter in the mountains; the White Guards, stockpiling meat, shot the animals even with their machine guns; About 200 bison were killed, but if we accept the figure calculated at a special meeting in the village of Psebay on November 9, 1924, 270 bison were destroyed.”

By 1920, the entire population numbered 50 individuals, including at least 20 bison in the Kishi and Khamyshkov area.

On December 3, 1920, the Kuban-Black Sea Revolutionary Committee, following the report of the environmental commission under the Council for Survey and Study of the Kuban Territory, published a Resolution on the establishment of the “Kuban High Mountain Reserve”, which was to include the former military dachas Mezmayskaya, Khamysheiskaya and Malo-Labinskaya and the former state-owned dachas Malo-Labinskaya, Bolshe-Labinskaya, Sakhrayskaya and Tkhachskaya with a total area of ​​415,386 acres. December 10, 1920, at the insistence of the Head of the Kuban-Black Sea Administration for Museums, Protection of Natural Monuments and Antiquities, prof. G.G. Grigor, the Kuban-Black Sea Executive Committee issues a new resolution on the reserve, according to which the southern slopes of the Main Caucasus Range were included in its composition, while the Sakhrayskaya and Tkhachskaya dachas were excluded from the reserve lands.

But, as Lizarov writes, “unfortunately, these decisions could not initiate the real existence of the reserve, carry out the actual protection of its nature, since this required significant material resources that were beyond the budget of the Kuban-Black Sea region. The funds released were barely enough to pay for the head of the reserve and two, later three, observers. To this it must be added that throughout this entire period (1920-1923), forest organizations stubbornly ignored these regulations and carried out merciless logging on the territory of the reserve. The existence of the reserve was also not recognized by the Maikop Union of Hunters, which established a hunting reserve on the territory of the reserve, the guards of which protected the reserve for the right (used to the widest extent) of hunting in it. This reserve was liquidated only towards the end of 1924.” .

Interesting facts in the “Report on the Kuban Reserve” are given by Makarovsky, assistant forest ranger of the Malo-Labinsk forestry: “The Republic faced the issues of war, hunger and devastation in all their menace; the question of the Kuban Reserve was, by necessity, relegated to the background, in the center about it they forgot, it was captured on the spot (in Psebai) without anyone’s sanction into ignorant hands, and then, unfortunately, I have to describe the ugly forms that this institution of high scientific value has taken at the present time.

In 1918, the old rangers were eliminated, one of the citizens of the village of Psebayskaya, having gathered a group of like-minded people around him, declared himself in charge of the reserve, and his like-minded people as rangers of a reserve that had not yet been established by anyone, and this group began to function under the name “Kuban Hunting Board”. It is absolutely impossible to suspect this group of any relation to science, because even its head is an illiterate person. The functions were immediately determined by sharp antagonism with the forest guards and a clear tendency to abolish them and occupy forest cordons and allotments. Of course, there can be no talk of any scientific or hunting-economic activity of the Board. All activity was expressed in periodic hunting trips and the same periodic raids on forest guards. The resumption of salt licks, the preparation of hay for deer and goats, at least an approximate count of bison, any observations of the life of animals inhabiting the reserve - all these are issues that are immeasurably higher than the concept of the indicated rangers. The above-mentioned illiterate citizen of the village of Psebayskaya is still the de facto manager of the only reserve on the globe inhabited by bison. From the above, it is clearly seen that only attempts and more than weak attempts were made towards the establishment of the reserve.”

“Not only residents of the nearest villages rushed into previously closed forests and meadows,” writes Bashkirov, “from afar, with large herds, Mingrelians, Abkhazians, Karachais, and Adygeis came here. The beast was beaten."

Dramatically describes the disappearance of bison by S.S. Turov: “On the current territory of the Caucasian reserve there were about 900-1000 heads of Caucasian bison. The events of the civil war, the presence of various white-green gangs in the forests of the Maykop district, and the lack of security led to the complete destruction of the Caucasian bison. Crowds of poachers rushed to places rich in game. They destroyed bison not even for food, but because of senseless excitement. Meat and even skins were thrown to the wolves. How the bison were destroyed can be seen from how one of the residents of the village of Dakhovskaya killed 18 bison, another, from Psebay, killed 7 females in the last stage of pregnancy. Ultimately, all the bison were destroyed."

And here is what one of the poachers from the tsarist era, G.I. Bessonny, who later began working in the protection of the reserve, remembers about the hunt of that time:

“I shot bison because need forced me. I felt sorry for them and beat them only when necessary. In total, I myself killed six bison, and there were many such hunters who mercilessly destroyed them at all times in large numbers; in a season they took up to twenty heads at a gun. There lived such a person in Maikop - Samonin, the owner of a tannery. He gave me an order for bison skins. The payment was twenty-five rubles per skin. Samonin made harnesses from bison skins: collars, bridles, harnesses. The best leathers were used for drive belts for threshing machines: two leathers per belt. Samonin charged two hundred and fifty rubles for one belt. This is how he profited from our poaching.”

One of the most important reasons for unbridled poaching in those years was identified by Slashchevsky. He believed that the enormous harm caused to the Caucasian bison came from the local population, part of which “instilled in themselves the pernicious idea that if all the bison were exterminated, there would be no reserve to restrain their predatory exploitation of nature.”

The organization of the Caucasus Nature Reserve in 1924 did not save the bison due to the difficulties of protecting the animal in the mountains and the abundance of weapons among the local population that remained after many years of wars and revolutions. The persecution of bison by poachers continued in the future.

If in 1921 40-50 heads of Caucasian bison were still preserved, then by the time the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR published the decree on the Caucasian State Reserve (May 12, 1924), 10-15 bison remained. And these remnants were destroyed in the next 1-2 years, since the reserve was forced to allow outside organizations into its territory and could not even seek conviction of captured poachers. “The State Trade Committee also played a role here, unofficially buying bison skins from the population (400 rubles each),” concludes Bashkirov.

From 1921 to 1926 Several cases of bison slaughter were noted:

In the summer of 1925, Kh. G. Shaposhnikov’s assistant A. P. Gunali was looking for bison on the territory of the reserve. According to the guide, geologist Robinson, it was known that a member of the village council of the village of Psebay, Andrei Petrov, saw a bison in the Balkan tract on the town of Yatyrgvart in 1924. Gunali himself discovered in 1925 a herd of eight heads on the river. Mastakanke. Gunali also saw animal tracks on Alouska. It was decided to preserve at least these bison that were still roaming, to build an enclosure and drive the animals into it, despite the fact that such a small population would hardly be able to ensure the further continuation of the species. An enclosure was built and a section of the territory was fenced off, but after that the bison were no longer found...

Subsequently, observers of the reserve and special expeditions were unable to detect either bison or even their fresh traces, which was officially confirmed in 1927 by the expedition of the Main Science Department under the leadership of professors D. P. Filatov and M. P. Rozanov

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