#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Four specialists from the Wrangel Island state nature reserve, who have been keeping registering the polar bears’ birth dens for several years now, have arrived at the site and are preparing to set out on the routes. The GoArctic portal reports this.
A group of scientists arrived on the island in early March. Traditionally, the dens registering begins in mid-March; on these days that female bears with young offspring leave the winter homes that pregnant females have equipped for themselves in the fall.
“The field season begins – the group reached Wrangel island without delay. The weather did not disappoint this time, which is extremely rare. This is especially good, since this year the bears started leaving their dens earlier, and every day counts. Now the guys are preparing equipment for research. In the near future they plan to go out on the route to count dens”, said the Wrangel Island state nature reserve’s acting director Alexander Skripnik.
A group of reserve inspectors has three small drones, which allow them to monitor dens at a distance so as not to scare the animals. Two of them are equipped with cameras with thermal imagers that can detect the heat emitted by bears even through a snow layer.
Every year during the spring field season, experts survey an area of a thousand square kilometers, including neighboring Herald island. The current group will stay on the island for two weeks, after which they will be replaced by another one. As a rule, scientists keep registering dens until the first ten days of April.
Earlier, we reported that the Bear Patrol project began to operate in Russia.
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Text: Polina Bardik, Photo: Denis Kozhevnikov
