Intensive study on population ecology of the European mink Mustela lutreola as a critically endangered species in the Lovat terrain, Paazierre Forest, northern Belarus in 1988-2000, particularly the researches in 1995-1997 in collaboration with Prof. Dr. David Macdonald and Dr. Hans Kruuk, were a serious school for me, and that advanced a lot my professional knowledge and skills. For those three years I was accepted as a member of Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) in the Oxford University and visited it several times per year. For the mentioned studies there were applied the whole variety of available research methods of mammal population ecology including a lot of telemetry. In total we radiotagged 38 European mink (18 inds were radiotracked for long enough), 69 American mink Neovison vison (35) and 19 polecats Mustela putorius (12).
In 1995, specially for the study on the European mink there was established a field station in the Zadrach hamlet, Haradok district, Vitebsk region of Belarus. Zadrach field station still exists. After the European mink project (1997-2010) the Zadrach fieldstation was tensely used to investigate the vertebrate predator-prey community. Nowadays it is mainly visited for some study on brown bears.
In 1999-2000 I successfully helped to Dr.Tiit Maran with eradication of American mink in the Huiimaa islands, Estonia as well as checked the habitat suitability for the European mink there.
Those studies and the species conservation output were published in a series of articles and in the three books that may be download following the links below.
D.W. Macdonald, V. Sidorovich, T. Maran, H.Kruuk. “European mink, Mustela lutreola: Analyses for Conservation” – WildCRU and Darwin Initiative, 2002.
“Analysis of vertebrate predator-prey community. Studies within the European Forest zone in terrains with transitional mixed forest in Belarus” – Tesey, 2011
“Mustelids in Belarus” – Zolotoy Ulej, 1997
