In 2023, employees of the Laboratory of Population Ecology, together with the Voroninsky Nature Reserve, began a project to restore the population of the speckled ground squirrel, a species listed in the Red Book of Russia, whose numbers and distribution are steadily declining throughout its entire range in Russia and Europe. Ground squirrels are ecosystem engineers and play a key role in the sustainable dynamics of grassland ecosystems. Their burrowing activity ensures the normal functioning of soils, supports the diversity of vegetation and the existence of hundreds and thousands of living organisms. Ground squirrels themselves are an important food source for a variety of terrestrial and feathered predators. The reduction in their numbers and range leads to disruption of the sustainable functioning of pasture ecosystems.
The project was initiated by Olga Anatolyevna Burkanova, director of the Voroninsky Nature Reserve, as well as independent researcher Sergei Fedorovich Sapelnikov and employee of the Voronezh Nature Reserve Inna Igorevna Sapelnikova. Employees of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences got involved at the very first stages and provided scientific support for the project,along with regional authorities and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation. At the first stage, an enclosure 40x40 m was built in the Voroninsky Nature Reserve in the Tambov region - the original habitat of the speckled ground squirrel, where it became extinct before.
In the summer of 2023, 40 ground squirrels, captured near Lipetsk in one of the last known large settlements of this species, were released into an enclosure in which holes had been drilled in advance.
The ground squirrels quickly settled into the enclosure, and hormonal analysis showed that just three days after release, the stress level had dropped to normal. In August, they went into hibernation and, as surveys in April 2024 showed, they overwintered safely, creating the basis for the first semi-free population in Russia and Europe, which should become a source for the reintroduction of ground squirrels into nature.
The Ministry of Natural Resources expressed great interest in continuing the project, noting with gratitude the special contribution of IEE RAS employees Olga Nikolaevna Shekarova and Lyudmila Evgenievna Savinetskaya. Congratulations to them!
