Aurochs (also Heck cat­tle or Tau­rus cat­tle) once col­o­nized large parts of Europe. With the more inten­sive use of the land­scape by humans since the Mid­dle Ages, they have been dis­placed into ever more remote regions. In 1627 the last known aurochs died in the woods south of War­saw. With that the wild aurochs became extinct.

In the 1930s there were attempts in the Berlin and Munich zoo to “breed back” the aurochs from prim­i­tive domes­tic cat­tle breeds. The zoo direc­tors in Berlin and Munich were the broth­ers Heinz and Lutz Heck. The results of their breed­ing and their off­spring are called Heck cattle.

Even if back-breed­ing an extinct ani­mal is not real­ly pos­si­ble, the breed­ing results are remark­able. The out­side of the Heck cat­tle is now very sim­i­lar to the aurochs, which we know from his­tor­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tions and can recon­struct from skele­tal remains. How­ev­er, the Heck cat­tle have not yet reached the impres­sive size of the extinct aurochs. Bulls have reached shoul­der heights of 160 cm to 180 cm and a weight of 1,000 kg. Since the 1990s attempts have been made to rem­e­dy this defi­cien­cy by cross­ing large cat­tle breeds. The ani­mals result­ing from these breed­ing exper­i­ments are called Tau­rus cattle.

Heck cat­tle have been used in nature con­ser­va­tion projects for sev­er­al decades because they are very robust, can be kept out­doors all year round and give birth to their calves with­out human help. If they have a suf­fi­cient­ly large pas­ture avail­able, they can man­age with­out addi­tion­al feed­ing — except in times of need.

Because the ani­mals are kept here in low graz­ing den­si­ty, they struc­ture the land­scape in a (almost) nat­ur­al way. Dur­ing the grow­ing sea­son they eat the parts of the veg­e­ta­tion that are obvi­ous­ly par­tic­u­lar­ly tasty. Oth­er things stand still. In the win­ter time of need, the excess stocks are then grazed. This cre­ates a veg­e­ta­tion mosa­ic that is attrac­tive to many oth­er­wise rare insect and bird species.

In 2010 our asso­ci­a­tion set­tled these primeval ani­mals on an area between Lunow and Stolzen­hagen on the south­ern edge of the nation­al park. In the mean­time we have the atti­tude of the spe­cial­ly found­ed Öko Agrar GmbH Low­er Oder Val­ley to hand over. She keeps and breeds the aurochs on now five large pastures.

There they live under almost nat­ur­al con­di­tions. We only have to lim­it their scope of action by cou­pling the areas.

Since they mul­ti­ply and espe­cial­ly male ani­mals can­not be kept togeth­er in any num­ber, we also slaugh­ter reg­u­lar­ly. The meat of the ani­mals that live here almost under nat­ur­al con­di­tions is of very high quality.

The wild pasture

On these pas­tures near Lunow — out­lined here in red on the map — you can observe aurochs and the Konik hors­es or Exmoor ponies. How­ev­er, both pas­tures are quite large, the north­ern one a good 60 hectares. It may be that the ani­mals are stand­ing far away or have laid down in the tall grass to rest. It takes a lit­tle luck if you want to see the ani­mals. But it is def­i­nite­ly worth a vis­it. The north­ern area is best seen from the canal dike. To do this, walk (or ride your bike) from Lunow over the bridge and then to the left (to the north) in the direc­tion of Stolzen­hagen or from Stolzen­hagen over the bridge to the right (to the south) in the direc­tion of Lunow. In addi­tion to aurochs, you will also come across Exmoor ponies on this pas­ture. On the south­ern pas­ture area — locat­ed on the Oder-Neisse cycle path between Lunow and the Oder — you can watch aurochs and Koniks.