The European bison (Bison bonasus), also known as wisent or the European wood bison, is a Eurasian species of bison. European bison were hunted to extinction in the wild, with the last wild animals being shot in the Bia³owie¿a Forest (on the Poland-Belarus border) in 1919 and in the northwestern Caucasus in 1927. The European bison is the heaviest surviving wild land animal in Europe; a typical European bison is about 2.1 to 3.5 m (6.9 to 11.5 ft) long, not counting a tail of 30 to 80 cm (12 to 31 in) long, and 1.6 to 1.95 m (5.2 to 6.4 ft) tall.Its body masses among adults (aged 6 and over) are 634 kg (1,398 lb) on average in the cases of males, with a range of 400 to 920 kg (880 to 2,030 lb). The total worldwide population is around 4,663 (including 2,701 free-ranging) and has been increasing in countries like Belarus, Finland, Caucasus, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine