MINSK, December 27. /TASS/. The staff of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha national park has started counting European bison with the aid of a drone, the press service of the Belarusian natural reserve said on Tuesday.

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

"A relatively new, modern methodology of determining the headcount, sex and age of animals" is being used this year. It takes into account the results of ground-based visual observations and data obtained by quadcopter surveys. The remote method is employed when recording large herds of European bison in an open area. The quadcopter "takes shots at different heights, on the move, and on challenging terrain," the National Park said.

To determine the composition of the bison population, the highest-quality images are selected, with magnification to determine the sex and age of an animal, and then "color-coded dotting of animals by sex and age" is carried out. "Conducting high-quality bison counts in general is a very time-consuming process that requires repeated visits to specific bison localization sites," the conservation agency added.

As of January 1, 2022, 703 European bison were counted in the Belarusian segment of the national park, 28 animals more than in 2021. There are 779 buffaloes registered in the Polish segment of the forest.

The population of European bison is jeopardized now by the border wall erected by Poland on the perimeter with Belarus. According to the Belarusian Ministry of Natural Resources, the artificial barrier has already resulted in the fragmentation of unique relic forests, protected habitats of endangered species, the depletion of the gene pool of their populations, and the disruption of hydrological conditions of adjacent ecosystems. In November 2022, the UN and Belarus agreed to establish an expert team to promote issues related to adverse implications of the border wall constructed by Poland on international fora.