Animal of the Year

Posted by the Animal of the Year Team 27.12.2016

Posted by the team of the Animal of the Year 23.12.2016

The third year in the shadow of the African Swine Fever is ending and we ask Tõnis Korts, the executive director of the Estonian Hunters’ Society if there are boars in the forest and if there is some relief in the  worries of hunters compared to last year.  The main weight of pest control has after all fallen on the hunters.

The badger is in its winter sleep, but what about the bears?
November started with snowfalls and minus degrees. Nature quickly took on a wintery aspect. At the same time the ground was unfrozen and under the snow there was even water in shallow spots.

Posted by the Animal of the Year team 12.12.2016

This year the first badger monitoring in Estonia took place. It was an important enterprise  with regard to the animal of the year. In the beginning of the year we did not know the status of the badger population. It could be guessed that badgers were not too badly off since they  are observed here and there all the time, but nothing more precise than a conjecture could be stated until now.  Since there is no great hunting interest in badgers data collected by hunters are not available either.

On the threshold of early winter let us glance at the autumn this year. The peculiarity of the 2016 autumn was the early snow. Already on October 25 the first snowmen appeared in Estonia. True, their life was not long..

The wolves are back at the Salumetsa sett. We see one in front of the camera, the pair of eyes of the second one gleam for a moment from the shadow of the forest.

Posted by the Animal of the Year team 06.12.2016  

Posted by the Animal of the Year team in Estonian on 26.11.2016

A video of the Latvian badgers, from spring to the All Souls time 2016. It is especially nice to see at the end of the video the badger on the doorstep of his burrow on St Martin’s day this year. The snow keeps falling, the badger sits calmly and does not even think of creeping into the burrow. We also see in the video, in addition to the four badgers, hazel grouse, raccoon dogs, a wolf and other animals. The video is recorded in the Mežaparks ground, with 9 cameras at three setts.

At the beginning of last week there was still a quite decent winter. The  Soosaare sett was covered by a solid carpet of snow and the badgers stayed napping in the burrow. Neither did the raccoons want to go far from the burrow openings in the cold.

Posted by the Animal of the Year team, 20.11.2016