The 25th of November the international working meeting on the problems of rehabilitation and reproduction of the large carnivores started.
Within the walls of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution named after Aleksey Severtsov of the Russian Academy of Sciences the staff of the Russian and foreign nature protecting organizations during the first three days are presenting the methods of recovery of populations of large carnivores which are being used in different places of the world. Besides, the scientists will discuss the problems of the processes of rehabilitation and reintroduction of the animals, the output of them, genetic, zoological and veterinary aspects. The 27th of November the separate section of the work meeting will be dedicated to the items of the relations with the governmental organizations, programs of breeding animals and nature protecting funds.
The participants of the work meeting. Photo by Nikolay Razuvayev
The corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Science, the director of the Institute of the problems of Ecology and Evolution named after Aleksey Severtsov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vyacheslav Rozhnov addressed with a greeting word to the participants of the event. «I hope that this working meeting which has been organized by us, will be interesting to everyone, and we will exchange that experience, which was gained by each of us individually for the purpose of realization of new projects», - he said.
Also Vyacheslav told the foreign guests about the institution named after Aleksey Severtsov in details and about the Permanent expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences on studying the animals of the Red Book of the Russian Federation and the other very important animals of the fauna of Russia, after what he opened the conference with the introductory presentation about the problems of reintroduction of the big predatory mammals.
«Reintroduction – is a recovery of the kind within the historic range in the places where the population disappeared or was exterminated for any reason. The regeneration of the populations is usually being executed with the help of translocation, that is to say – replacement of the species from the wealthy populations to the areas where that kind had disappeared, or with the help of preparing of the animals in special centers for them to learn the whole specter of life skills in the wild nature, and then were released to the wild nature», - Vyacheslav Rozhnov said.
Two more presentations of Mr. Rozhnov were dedicated to the results of work on reintroduction of Amur tigers and Far Eastern leopards in the Far East of Russia. The scientist noted that the rehabilitation process of predatory mammals demands an interdisciplinary approach and detailed study of ontogeny of behavior of the animals, as the species, being grown up in the centers of reintroduction, must be well developed physically and have the behavior typical for a predator: ability to hunt prey, natural for them, and to avoid a human and those places where domestic animals are placed.
The conference-hall of the Institute of the problems of Ecology and Evolution named after Aleksey Severtsov of the Russian Academy of Science
«We are developing the methods of rehabilitation, and we have reached, I think, quite good progress in rehabilitation of the tigers- orphans, which regularly appear in nature in the Far East. We place them in special center, choosing and evaluate the places of dwelling for recovery of populations, implement preparing of the animals for releasing them into the wild, and then we execute monitoring of the animals which had been released», - Vyacheslav added.
The programs of the Permanent expedition of the Russian Academy of Science on saving the rare animal species have been being held under the auspices of the Russian Geographical Society from the year of 2010.
Photo by Nikolay Razuvaev
Also on the first day of the conference the programs on recovery of various types of populations of big predatory mammals were presented by the participants from India (reintroduction of Bengal tiger), from the South Africa (reintroduction of the South China tiger), from Korea (recovery of tigers and leopards in the Korean Peninsula), from Portugal (Pyrenean lynx saving program) and Switzerland (reintroduction of the Eurasian lynx).
The working meeting will be held till the 27th of November inclusively.