Wolves seen hunting European bison in rare camera-trap recording

Wolves are making a comeback in many parts of Europe

John Ceulemans/Shutterstock

In the depths of Poland’s wilderness, a camera trap has recorded a pack of wolves pursuing a young bison.

This unusual footage indicates that bison may be more frequently preyed upon by wolves in Europe than previously assumed.

“My mind was blown,” remarks Robin Wijnands from the Polish Academy of Sciences. “I was really surprised because I really didn’t expect wolves to hunt bison, especially when there are so many other prey available in the forest.”

The European bison (Bison bonasus) once roamed extensively across Europe but vanished in the wild in the early 20th century due to hunting and habitat destruction. Thanks to conservation efforts, the species was reintroduced to the wild in the 1950s, and now approximately 9000 bison inhabit scattered populations across the continent.

Wolves have also been thriving recently in Europe, with their population growing by 58 per cent over the past decade. Nonetheless, only a handful of instances of wolves hunting bison have been recorded since the species’ reintroduction.

Wijnands and her colleague Tomasz Borowik documented the hunt in September 2025 using a camera trap while researching in Poland’s Białowieża Primaeval Forest, where European bison were first reintroduced in the 1950s.

At 7.25am, a pack of seven wolves initiated the hunt, targeting a bison herd of 11. They distracted the adults and focused on a newborn calf. During the pursuit, the wolves managed to bite and seize the calf by the neck twice, but both times the adult bison defended, charging with their horns. The herd then encircled the calf to shield it, driving the wolves away.

The entire encounter lasted 20 minutes, and it’s unclear from the footage if the young bison survived.

“The chance that the camera is placed in a location that captures the wolf-prey interaction is very low. It’s a matter of the camera being in the right place at the right time. So this is a lucky recording,” says Oswald Schmitz from Yale University, who was not involved in the observation.

There are concerns that high bison numbers might harm habitats or farmland and negatively affect other wildlife. In this context, wolf predation might be beneficial, the researchers suggest.

“We don’t really believe, even if predation occurs more frequently than we think, that it would steeply decline the bison population, but rather, it could potentially help a bit in stabilising the population,” says Wijnands. “It would be very interesting to get a better idea of how often it occurs, and what could potentially be the ecological consequences.”

Topics: