Enlightenment · Europe · Science

1686

Last Aurochs Sighting Confirmed

1686

Polish foresters at Jaktorow confirmed that the aurochs, once widespread across Europe, had been reduced to a handful of animals on a single royal reserve. A long, slow biological extinction was becoming visible to European administrators; conservation as an idea was, without being named, beginning to flicker into existence. The species would be entirely gone within decades.

In context
Also in 1686 (4 other events on record)
Era

Enlightenment (1651–1800), one of 696 events from that era on Saeculum.