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Land Rover Magazine Issue 39

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  • Vista
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  • Bison
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Icelandic surfing, enabled by the new Land Rover Defender | Artisanal globe-making in London with Bellerby & Co | Gallery of stunning drone photography | Author Helen Russell explores the meaning of happiness | Exclusive short story by Jean Macneil

“... rugged,

“... rugged, wind-scoured, grey-gold sand dunes, created over countless centuries by complex tides...”

The Discovery warms up to the task of bison tracking. Below right: park ranger Ruud Maaskant Off-road sequences on private land with full permissions Can it be true? Yes it can. It was just a brief glimpse, of big black horns and tawny fur, but we have just seen one of the rarest big mammals on the continent. For a quarter of a second. The quest for a better view continues, as I ponder our quarry. The story of the European bison is, in its own way, the story of all European fauna. And it is a story that came perilously close to a tragic end. European bison – official Latin name, Bison bonasus; poetic English name, the wisent – are a hybrid descendent of the primitive steppe bison and the fairytale auroch, or giant cattle. Back in the day, the wisent roamed freely across Eurasia, from northern Spain, through France, Benelux, Germany, north Italy, and out into Eastern Europe. Slightly smaller than their famous American cousins, they are, nonetheless, magnificent. With their classic hunchback shoulders, great for charging, and menacing, they can stand up to six feet and weigh the best part of a tonne. Of course, 800kg is a lot of potential shoes, steaks and Viking drinking horns, so these beasts were always eagerly and expertly hunted. Poignantly, one of the first depictions of European bison, from 15,000BC, is in the beautiful cave paintings at Lascaux, France. It shows a wisent speared to death, its intestines tumbling. Despite some precocious conservation laws in the 16th century (preserving the creatures for royal bloodsport), bison hunting continued into the 1900s, by which point the poor wisent was reduced – bar a few outliers – to a limited range in the so-called ‘Great Wilderness,’ a remote and wild tract of southern Lithuania and eastern Poland. And then came World War I, and regiments of cold, hungry German soldiers, who barbecued the bulk of the great Polish herds. The last wild wisent was shot after the war, in Bialowieza Forest, in 1919. Game over? Not quite. Miraculously, a few European bison had been preserved in zoos across the world. Using the genes of these captive animals, the Polish government began a reintroduction programme, one of the more successful of its kind. It is thought that around 4,000 bison now live, once again, in Bialowieza Forest. But as Esther explains: “Recent research suggests that forests are not a permanent environment for bison. The bison only sheltered in the trees so they could be safe 35

 

Land Rover

Land Rover Magazine 39

 

Land Rover Magazine showcases stories from around the world that celebrate inner strength and the drive to go above and beyond

Land Rover stands for not only the most capable premium vehicles, but a state of mind where a sense of curiosity, exploration and wonder informs all of life’s adventures. Encounter this throughout the latest issue of Land Rover Magazine, from meeting a herd of Ice Age survivors on the Dutch coast with the Land Rover Discovery, to the most innovative sustainable architecture on a Californian journey with the Range Rover Evoque

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