Siberian Federal University (SFU) will continue to study the status and habitat of the wild reindeer population in the Evenki Municipal District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. This large-scale project, called the Evenki Reindeer, got underway in 2014.

"Despite the fact that the wild reindeer has been studied for a long time, the global changes that are happening on the planet today pose completely new questions for the researchers," said Alexander Savchenko (D.Sc. in Biology), the project manager, head of the Department of Hunting Resource Studies and Wildlife Management and a professor at Siberian Federal University.

The scope of upcoming research will be unprecedented in the history of studying the region — it will involve over 170 hours of aviation research, including using drones. Aerial photography will cover an area of ​​over 500,000 square kilometers. During over 200 days of field studies, the researchers also plan to tag and ring over 100 animals and birds, and to take more than 1,000 biological samples for subsequent laboratory analysis. After the field studies, the obtained materials will be analyzed in 10 Russian laboratories, including regional ones.

"Any data obtained, especially using modern technologies, in many ways allows us to understand and find out what is happening with the northern species and why," Alexander Savchenko emphasized.

In total, eight expeditions will be held by 2023 as part of a large-scale project to study the key species of Arctic ecosystems. The program will continue the research on polar bears, walruses and reindeer carried out by Rosneft in 2014-2018.