The press service of the Ministry of Ecology and Nature Management of the Moscow Region announced the beginning of work to identify the state of the natural population of the common hamster in the region. The first burrows of this animal have already been found in Lukhovitsy.
Residents of the Moscow Region were asked to share information about the places of their meetings with the common hamster in the region. For this, the department published a phone number and email address to which you can send a message. The hamster is nocturnal, which makes it difficult to find. Most often, information about its finds comes from cat owners who bring the animal home as a trophy.
The common hamster was recently included in the Red Book of the Moscow Region. Until the 2000s, these animals were widespread south of Moscow and lived on the outskirts of fields and pastures. However, due to the increase in anthropogenic pressure, the population of these rodents began to decline. In recent years, there have been few encounters with the common hamster in the region.
The rapid decline in the population of animals is taking place throughout the range. According to the lists of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the common hamster is recognized as a species on the verge of complete extinction. In Russia, it is included in the Red Data Books of more than 10 regions, for example, Ryazan,Lipetsk, Voronezh and Belgorod.
Blogs
