The Director of the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve, Evgeny Grigoriev, is taking part in the Vth International Wildlife Management Congress held on July 26-30 in Sapporo (Japan).

About 1,000 specialists from more than 50 countries attend the congress; they are all interested in strengthening the international environmental stability and wildlife conservation. Scientists from the Academy of Sciences, the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve, the Lazovsky and the Sikhote Alin Reserves are representing Russia. Such a representative forum provides a unique opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience.

As part of the Congress there are held plenary meetings, roundtable discussions and symposia covering various topics of natural resources, ecology, taxonomy and other research fields of wildlife biology.

At the Congress, the Director of the Prioksko-Terrasny State Biosphere Reserve, Evgeny Grigoriev, presents a poster titled “Contemporary Problems of the Restitution of European Bison bonasus L. in the Russian Federation”

The issue is burning, because the European bison (Bison bonasus L.) is one of a few species in the world that has been saved due to captive breeding. By 1927, the “king of the bulls” was completely exterminated in wild nature. To save the European bison as a species in the USSR the Bison Breeding Centre was created in the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve in 1948. Today, its objective is to ensure the preservation of existing populations of bison and creation of new viable ones with the greatest possible genetic diversity that can exist in the wild in within the territory of the Russian Federation.

Bison bred in the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve became the founders of wild populations. For 66 years, the number of species in Russia increased from 4 to 630 individuals.