Europe at the first millenium still had vast tracts of wilderness. The mega fauna of these primeval forests are now rare or extinct. Grolier's Endangered Species Encyclopedia says, "During the last centuries most the original European biotypes have been either destroyed or irreversibly altered, causing inevitable changes in plant and animal habitats."
Echoes of what was lost and what has changed are found in several documents from Kievan Rus. This passage is from The Testament of Vladimir Monomach (circa 1125).
I devoted much energy to hunting as long as I reigned in Chernigov.
Since I left
Chernigov, even up to the present time, I have made a practice of hunting
a hundred times a year with all my strength, and without harm, apart from
a certain
hunt after bison, since I had been accustomed to chase every sort of
game in my father's company.
At Chernigov, I even bound wild horses with my bare hands or captured
ten or twenty live horses with the lasso, and besides that, while riding
along the
Ros', I caught these same wild horses barehanded. Two bison tossed
me and my
horse on their horns, a stag once gored me, a boar tore my sword from
my thigh,
a bear on one occasion bit my kneecap, and another wild beast jumped
on my flank and threw my horse with me. But God preserved me unharmed.
The natural world is also strongly evoked in the epic Song of Prince Igor's Campaign (1185) which uses numerous animal metaphors. Wild animals mentioned include wolf, fox, ermine, raven, falcon, swan, eagle, nightingale, hawk, crow, cuckoo, magpie and woodpecker. Indeed, Igor's brother himself is nicknamed or identified with the wild bull or ox.
Of the animals mentioned in the above passages two are now extinct
and a number are rare in Europe. The European wild horse or tarpan
(Equus caballus) which Prince Vladimir captured was a short stocky animal
with a tan coat and short black mane. It once ranged the forests
and steppes of Eastern Europe. This primitive horse was hunted to
extinction for food. The last recorded animal died in
the Ukraine in 1876.
Although some biologists believe that the Przewalski horse which survives
in remote Central Asia may be the same species as the tarpan.
The wild ox or auroch (Bos primigenius), that Vsevelod was named after, was well know in the ancient world. The animal stood six feet high at the shoulder, with a blackish brown pelt, long sharp horns that swept out and forward, then upward and in. Cows were lighter brown and the calves reddish color. The aurochs lived in small herds in the forest, browsing on vegetation, acorns and nuts; venturing into the open in the summer. By the 1400s aurochs were hunted to extinction in most of Europe except Poland. There small herds survived until 1627.
The bison that nearly killer Prince Vladimir almost went extinct
as well. The European bison or wisent (Bison bonasus) is closely
related to the American buffalo.
It is taller and less stocky that than the North American animal and
subsists mostly on leaves. The preservation of the wisent is an epic
in conservation history beginning the Middle Ages and stretching through
World War II. The wisent suffered the same decline as the auroch
and tarpan due to hunting and clearing of land. Remnant herds lasted
into the Twentieth Century in Poland. In the chaos after the First
World War all the remaining wild wisent were destroyed, but 55 remained
in various zoos. International efforts followed and restoration work
has yielded results-- today there are several thousand animals worldwide
including herds in the hundreds in Poland and Belarus.
Brown bears (Ursus arctos) and wolves (Canis lupus), also mentioned in Vladimir's Testament were both species once common throughout the Northern Hemisphere. These animals still exist in the more remote parts of Europe, with substantial numbers of wolves in the Romania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. Animals relatively rare in modern Europe that were likely common in the Kievan period include moose and elk (Alces alces), beaver (Castor fiber) and lynx (Felis lynx). Other important animals found in Eastern European forests are red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), otter (Lutra lutra), fox (Vulpes vulpes), marten (Martes martes), badger (Meles meles), ermine (Mustela erminea) and wild boar (Sus scrofa).
Some significant birds of the region include the corncrake (Crex crex), white-tailed eagle (Haliaetus albicilla), white stork (Ciconia ciconia), the black stork (Cioconia nigra), peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), eagle owl (Bubo bubo), Pomeranian eagle (Aquila pomarina), spotted eagle (Aquila clanga), booted eagle (Hieraeetus pennatus), tawny owl (Strix aluco), pygmy owl (Glaucidium passerinum), three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus), white-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopus leucotos), crane (Grus grus), nutcracker (Nucifraga caryocatactes), red-breasted flycatcher (Muscicapa parva), and raven.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to see that landscape of ancient Rus undisturbed by the intervening centuries? Oddly enough such a place exists. Belovezhskaya Pushcha /Bialowieza Forest, is an UNESCO World Heritage Site on the border of Poland and Belarus where bison and other historic species still roam. This primeval forest retains spruce, linden and ash over 150 feet high and oak trees of nine-foot diameter. The first recorded piece of legislation on the protection of the forest covered this land and dates from 1538. . The forest was declared a hunting reserve in 1541 for the protection of European bison. In this place, by good fortune, we have a snap shot of primeval Europe, along with most of its original animals.
Notes:
1. Identification of species in tricky using vernacular names (as opposed to scientific names), doubly so since I am reading English not Russian texts. My correlation with medieval texts should be taken as reasonable inferences rather than fact.
2. An interesting project is underway for the genetic recreation
of the extinct Tarpan. The Polish government created a preserve
for animals descended from the wild Tarpan at a forest in Bialowieza. Over
the years this herd has developed more and more Tarpan characteristics.
Today this breed is sometimes referred to as the Polish Primitive Horse.
For more information see http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/tarpan/
3. For more information on the Belovezhskaya Pushcha/ Bialowieza
Forest start with the following site which has excellent links http://www.unesco.org/whc/sites/627.htm
Superb pictures can be found at http://www.sll.fi/TRN/Bialowieza/Bialow.html
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Anderson, Sydney ed. Simon and Schuster's Guide to Mammals (Simon and Schuster: New York, 1983)
McClung, Robert Last of the Wild, Vanished and Vanishing Giants of the
Animal World
(Linnet Books: North Haven, 1997)