Brown Caucasian Bear

The "Red Book" of the Republic of Azerbaijan is an official state document on the status of rare and endangered species of wild animals and wild plants in the country. The first edition of the book was published in 1989, the second edition in 2013, and the third edition in 2023. 241 species of fauna were included in the last edition, of which 39 are mammals. The number of mammals included in the first and second editions was 14 and 42, respectively. AZERTAC correspondent had an interview with Elshad Askerov, the head of the Azerbaijani representative office of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which participated in the evaluation of mammals in the third edition of the "Red Book".


E. Asgarov said that some mammals were included in the second edition of the "Red Book" without being seriously studied and evaluated, and pointed out that the names of three mammals were removed from the third book. Those animals are the brown bear, the woodpecker and the reed cat. The head of WWF's Azerbaijan representation justified it as follows: "It was thought that there are two subspecies of the brown bear in Azerbaijan: Caucasian and Syrian subspecies. According to the literature of that time, the Caucasian subspecies lived in the Greater Caucasus, and the Syrian subspecies, smaller in size and gray in color, lived in the rest of the country. Only the Syrian subspecies was planned to be included in the "Red Book" published in 2013. However, according to the rules of the "Red Book", the subspecies could not be listed separately, but only at the species level. Therefore, the brown bear was put into the second edition as a species. Then it became known that there are neither Caucasian nor Syrian subspecies bears in Azerbaijan. Bears in our country belong to the European subspecies. Also, with more accurate research, we learned that the current number of the bear is not at the level of danger for it to be included in the "Red Book".


Another species of fauna whose name was taken out, the tyrantaz, is the largest rodent mammal of the republic. Recently, people hunt it for its meat. Due to the urgency of the threat of hunting, they included the archer in the second edition of the "Red Book". The conducted studies showed that the population of the woodpecker is not at the limit of being included in the "Red Book". For that reason, the shooter's name was removed from the 2023 edition of the book. They also included the reed cat in the 2013 edition. The reason for this was the gradual destruction of reed areas and no place for them to live. However, at that time they did not take into account the fact that the reed cat can live not only in the reeds, but also in the forests starting from the seashore and up to 1500 meters above sea level. During the research, we found that its number is not at the dangerous level. However, these 3 large and medium-sized mammals were not included in the last edition of the "Red Book".