Weekly magazine “Arguments and Facts” No. 25. A difficult task. What has school education come to? 23/06/2021
News: “For the first time in Russia, Ural scientists will conduct a census of hedgehogs”. Are these some kind of valuable animals? Our scientists have nothing else to do?
“In my opinion, this representative of the fauna has not been studied enough. For example, few people know that 5 different species of hedgehogs live in Russia. Our task is not to count all hedgehogs completely, which, of course, is impossible, but to get data on the dynamics of growth or decrease in their number in Russia, ” said curator of the project “Hedgehogs of Russia”, Candidate of Biological Sciences, member of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Tolkachev. If it turns out that the number of hedgehogs is decreasing, then you need to include them in the Red Book. After all, they were deleted from it several years ago. Meanwhile, these are very useful animals: they eat insects, help gardeners to fight pests.
The first stage of the program project will last until autumn, when the animals will fall into hibernation. The study is designed for 5 years, it will mainly involve volunteers.
Photo: Public Domain