In mid-June, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called on Russians to donate towards the upkeep of European buffaloes in the Prioksko-Terrasny reserve, in a bid to protect this rare species, descendants of mammoths.

"Since the Soviet Union's fall, we have lacked financing. The state grants the reserve an annual 138,000 dollars, but this is just enough to pay the salaries and utility bills," the reserve's director Mikhail Brynskikh said.

For a 1,500-dollar fee, one can earn the title of a baby buffalo's adopted parent and the right to give it a name and come visit at whim.

"Our project appeals to both private citizens and companies which may wish to adopt a buffalo while balancing their annual checkbooks," a WWF official in Moscow, Sergei Burmistrov, explained.

The first volunteers were a pair of lawyers, Vitaly Chubia and his wife Elena Kolomenskaya, who dubbed their month-old charge Murzilka, in honor of a time-honored children's magazine.

"Our family and friends were shocked by our decision, they thought the sum was too much. But we did not hesitate a single minute," Kolomenskaya recalled.

"I was born in this region, near the preserve, and I am happy to be able to help its inhabitants," she added, watching from behind a fence as little Murzilka and his kin took a nonchalant walk in the forest.

With their large feet and short coats of soft beige, baby buffaloes look much more like small dogs than the future kings of the forest, resplendent with majesty and power.

An adult animal is nearly two meters high and three meters long, weighing up to 1,2 tonnes.

Centuries of merciless hunting brought the European buffalo, or bison bonasus, which once filled European forests, to the brink of extinction, with only 48 European buffaloes remaining in the world by the 1920s.

The Danki reserve was founded in 1948, with two buffalo couples brought over from neighboring Poland.

"We bring buffaloes up to return them back to nature. Nearly 500 animals were brought up here since 1948," the reserve's guide Tatyana Brynskikh said proudly.

Some 30 buffaloes are currently being raised on a 200-hectare plot of forest surrounded by a metal fence, with eight newborns now waiting for new Russian sponsorship.

Russia is now home to over 300 European buffaloes, with some 60 living in reserves -- in Danki or another near Ryazan southeast of Moscow.

The world's European buffalo population today stands at up to 3,000 animals, most of them living in Poland and Belarus.

TERRA.WIRE