Mammals of Asia

Two endangered Syrian brown bears were headed to a new life in the United States on July 18 after being rescued from cramped conditions in a Lebanese zoo, two charities said.

Homer and Ulysses, each aged 18 and weighing 130 kilos, had been living in a zoo near the southern city of Tyre, animal rights association Animals Lebanon said.

A brown bear has been spotted on streets of Mytishchi, Moscow's residential suburb with a population of about 170,000, a source in the city's emergency services told TASS on Tuesday.

Within the scope of the "Freedom to Bears" project initiated 27 years ago, 64 dancer bears were brought to the Ovakorusu Bear Shelter and Rehabilitation Center in the northwestern province of Bursa, out of which only one bear named Brütüs has survived to this day.

The bear shot in Ojdula - Covasna County, in a suspected case of trophy-hunting, was harvested 22 days after the issuance of the derogation order, and the hunt was preceded by three weeks of monitoring during which the animal was followed entering yards or coming close to the locality, Minister of Environment, Waters and Forests Barna Tanczos told a press conference today.

A caracal, which is in danger of extinction, has been photographed by motion-triggered camera, placed by in the field by Yasin İlemin, an academic in the western province of Muğla.

İlemin, who named the wild cat "Timur," shared its photo on his social media account, drawing great interest.

The Ormanya Wildlife Park in the northwestern province of Kocaeli hosted 5 million visitors despite the coronavirus pandemic last year.

Kocaeli Mayor Tahir Büyükakın said that Ormanya, located in Kartepe district, opened in May 2018. With a spectacular natural habitat, Ormanya welcomes millions of visitors each year, becoming Turkey's most visited one.

A brown bear named Arkadaş, which means "friend" in Turkish, which has been tracked through a satellite system that was attached to it in the Sarıkamış district of the eastern province of Kars, traveled 1033 kilometers in 141 days to find food and reproduce, according to an expert at Kuzeydoğa Association.

The number of "platoni," a subspecies of fallow deer (Dama dama), living in forested areas of the southeastern Aegean island of Rhodes has jumped from around 200 a few years ago to more than 5,000, according to a recent census conducted as part of a plan for their management, in response to the problem caused by their overpopulation, mainly in terms of crop damage.

Turkish Agricultural Minister Bekir Pakdemirli said that 23 fallow deer that will be released into nature in the western Manavgat and Köyceğiz districts are now in an adaptation process.

The number of fallow deer, whose natural population continued only in the resort town of Antalya and remained at only seven about half a century ago, reached 500 after a protection project was launched.

A project has been going on for more than half a century to increase the population of fallow deer among endangered species.