The rogue bison, named "Forest", first escaped from an illegal breeding farm in Silesia last autumn.

After surviving the winter and spending around 10 months roaming across three provinces, it was finally captured by conservationists from the Kurozwęki bison farm in central Poland on July 21.

But after being placed in a refuge farm, Forest escaped again, leading local conservationists to say he should be shot.

Lech Buchholz, a local conservationist from the central city of Kielce said: “In this situation, the only solution is to track down and eliminate this individual from the environment by means of culling.”

He added that this was a last resort though, and noted that culling an invasive species, such as the American bison, would require approval from authorities.

As the mating season for the American bison approaches, Buchholz believes that Forest could pose a threat to the pure line of the native bison population of Poland.

He is also concerned that the 900kg animal could carry dangerous parasites and may pose a threat to humans too.

The search for Forest is again underway with local conservationists, hunters and the minister of environment involved in the hunt.

In a post on X, Mikołaj Dorożała, vice minister of the environment ministry, appealed to the General Directorate of Environmental Protection, a state-run environmental institution, to do everything to keep the animal alive.

“Shooting is the finality, only in the event of an imminent threat to human life,” he wrote on X.