During the summer expedition, employees of the Taimyr Reserves Federal State Budgetary Institution marked 8 deer with satellite collars, and 6 more are to be marked during the autumn migration of animals. Modern technologies will make it possible to monitor the territorial distribution and behavior of the animals, as well as look for their accumulations during population counts.
The collars donated to the WWF-Russia reserve were put on while the animals were crossing the river, from a boat, using a special device that held the deer. Now the method of installing satellite radio markers has been worked out quite well, which allows you to quickly and reliably tag deer with collars causing them the least disturbance.
The expedition started in early June, right after the ice drift on the Kheta and Khatanga rivers. This year, the reindeer started migrating almost two weeks earlier than in recent years. The main groups moved north as soon as it got warm. And, thanks to the high intensity of spring migration, most of the population managed to overcome the rivers even on ice: already on May 7, the first deer were seen on the Kheta River, while last year it happened only on May 16.
In previous years, due to early spring heat waves in the east of Taimyr, which is most associated with local climate changes, ice on rivers started melting earlier and animals with newborn calves were forced to swim across the water barrier. At the same time, many newborns and one-year-old calves died. Now, due to the early timing of migration, most of them managed to cross the ice before calving, and the calves were born on summer pastures. “So, there is a possibility that most of them survived and became a potential replenishment of the population,” says Mikhail Bondar, Deputy Director for Science of the Taimyr Nature Reserves.
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