MINSK, 5 March (BelTA) – The number of European bisons in Belarus is getting close to 1,500, the press service of the Belarusian Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry told BelTA.
As of 1 February 2016 there were 1,428 European bisons in Belarus, 158 animals up from 2014.
At present there are ten micropopulations of the European bison in Belarus. Eight bisons have been relocated to Kazakhstan for the sake of creating new micropopulations that live in the wild outside Belarus.
As many as 15 bisons died in 2015 due to old age, traumas caused by other bisons, complications after traumas, due to poachers, and traffic accidents.
A set of medical and preventive measures has been implemented for the sake of enabling comfortable conditions for bisons, with over Br2.6 billion spent on it.
At present the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry is actively working with the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the oblast administrations and other interested agencies to work out the strategy for the consequent dispersal of the European bison across Belarus.