Watch The European Bison In Nature Reserves, Belarus Acquire Drones

European Bisnis in Belovezhskya Nature Reserve, Belarus. (Wikimedia Commons/Szeder L!szl?)

JAKARTA - The Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park staff has begun to monitor and calculate European bison with the help of drones, the Belarusian nature reserve press service said.

"Starting December this year, Belovezhskaya Pushcha has started counting European bison for the new season," the press service said.

"A relatively new and modern methodology to determine the number of heads, gender and age of animals is being used this year," the press service continued.

Further explained, this takes into account the results of ground-based visual observations and data obtained from quadcopter surveys.

The remote method is used while recording a large herd of European bison in an open area. Quadcopter "takes pictures at different heights, while moving and on challenging terrain," the National Park said.

To determine the composition of the bison population, a best quality image is selected, with an enlargement to determine the gender and age of the animal, and then do the dots of the color code on the animal by gender and age.

"Conducting a general high-quality bison tally is a very time-consuming process that requires repeated visits to specific bison localization locations," the conservation agency explained.

On January 1, 2022, there were around 703 European bison in the Belarusian national park segment, or 28 more than the number in 2021. Meanwhile, in the Polish forest segment, there are about 779 bison.

It said the European bison population was now threatened by a border wall founded by Poland around Belarus.

According to the Belarusian Ministry of Natural Resources, artificial barriers have resulted in unique relic forest fragmentation, protected habitats of endangered species, depletion of their population's gene pools, and disruption of the hydrological conditions of adjacent ecosystems.

In November 2022, the United Nations and Belarus agreed to form a team of experts to promote issues related to detrimental implications, due to the presence of a border wall that Poland built in an international forum.