Co-author Irina Rotenko
An aggressive encounter between raccoon dog and badger was documented by a camera-trap at the badger outlier in early June in Naliboki Forest, the central-western part of Belarus.
Continue reading “Raccoon dogs attacked an adult badger at its outlier”Co-author Irina Rotenko
In Belarus wolves visit badger setts rather often. Frequently the aim of such visits is to catch a badger that slacked near the burrow. During the breeding season of wolves, quite usually they try to get rid of badgers and occupy their sett. They use such burrows to leave pups inside. Normally wolf breeders enlarge the entrances of such a badger sett.
Continue reading “Wolf vandalizes badger sett with badger cubs inside”Historically, the badger was a fairly common species in the Naliboki Forest, located in the north‑western part of Belarus. According to information obtained from residents, who were familiar with the forest in the 1930s–1960s (e.g., Baliaslaw Sadowski, Lianard Jurevich, Edzik Khmara), badger setts were widespread. Approximately, the density of main setts – those used by family groups for overwintering, giving birth and raising cubs – was not lower than 15 per 100 km² in the most ecologically rich southern part of the forest, and about 4 per 100 km² in the central and central‑northern parts, where habitat carrying capacity for badgers is markedly lower. This suggests that the former density of a more or less undisturbed badger population in Naliboki Forest ranged roughly between 20 and 120 individuals per 100 km², depending on habitat quality.
Continue reading “Recovering of the badger local population in Naliboki Forest, NW Belarus, in connection with winter warming and predation by lynxes and wolves”A year ago, while publishing the book about badgers and raccoon dogs in Belarus (“Badger and Raccoon dog in Belarus: Population studies with implication for the decline in badgers“, Minsk, 2017), it looked like we knew all possible ways of interference between raccoon dogs and badgers. We registered blocking badgers sleeping in the sett’s hibernating chamber by raccoon dogs with suffocating of the badgers afterwards; killing of badger cubs by raccoon dogs; non-effective attacks of badger on raccoon dog at its sett as well as a lot of marking of badger setts by both species in order to prevent usage of the sett by the burrow-competitor species. Any attack of an active badger by raccoon dogs was not registered, and that was considered as something non-real.
Continue reading “Interference between the badger and raccoon dog in Belarus”
Within the analysis of vertebrate predator-prey community we carried out the population studies on the badger Meles meles and raccoon dog Nyctereutes procyonoides with implication for the strong decline in badgers even in seminatural terrains in Belarus. Continue reading “What is the cause of the badger population decline in Belarus? “
Since my childhood I have been very interested in tracks of mammals and in the entire variety of activity signs of mammals and birds on the whole. Within this my passion I tried to push forward not only identifying of mammal activity signs, but their usage in track-based research methods on population ecology as well as to reconstruct correctly the respective behavior of mammals from their activity signs. Continue reading “Reading mammal activity signs”
In the period of 1993-2010 I led the Vertebrate Predation Research Group in the same research Institute of zoology, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The group consisted of 3-12 colleagues (including PhD-students and Diploma-students) and was aimed to investigate vertebrate predators, mainly carnivores, but also owls, diurnal raptors and snakes. The studies took place in Paazierre Forest (the northern part of Belarus) and Naliboki Forest (the central-western part of Belarus), i.e. semi-natural terrains with transitional mixed forest within the European Forest zone. Continue reading “Analysis of predation in vertebrate community”
Zoology by Vadim Sidorovich 