admin_cHojnowski posted on July 15, 2008 01:12
Just over a year after its opening, WCS’s Sikhote-Alin Research Center is already attracting young wildlife biologists from throughout Russia and from abroad. Currently 6 graduate students (5 Russian, 1 Canadian) are living at the Center, conducting research and participating in Siberian Tiger Project field activities.
The Sikhote-Alin Research Center in Terney is designed to support young ecologists, biologists, and conservationists from Russia, the United States, and other countries; and to facilitate development of collaborative relationships between scientists from Russia and abroad. Students are supervised by Siberian Tiger Project Field Coordinator Ivan Seryodkin and WCS Russia Program Director Dale Miquelle.
The following students are based at the Center for summer, 2008:
- Svetlana Soutyrina, Ph.D. student from Irkutsk State University, who is continuing a joint Russian-American research project comparing methods for estimating tiger densities, with a focus on camera trapping
- Sergei Pizyuk, who is conducting bear behavioral studies for his dissertation and began participating in tracking and radio-telemetry activities as a field assistant for the Siberian Tiger Project in fall 2007. In May 2008, Sergei joined up with Canadian student Erin Latham to pilot a hair-snagging study to estimate bear population densities in the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve
- Master of Science student Alyona Salmanova, who is also working as a field research assistant for the Siberian Tiger Project through the summer
- Moscow State University graduate Lika Sagatelova, who arrived to the Sikhote-Alin Research Center in June to begin exploring options for her dissertation research, to be conducted on large carnivores
Since the opening of the Sikhote-Alin Research Center at the end of 2006, WCS has supported nine graduate students at the facility, several of whom are engaged in year-long or multi-year field research projects.