Marek Kislovskij
A photographer was shocked to discover that his remote trail camera had captured a brown bear in an area where the species is so rare that they were previously considered extinct.
Marek Kislovskij from Lithuania captured the bear wandering through the forest of the Salcinikai district, which is close to the Belarus border. The Baltic nation once boasted a healthy population, but like many European countries, its numbers have declined because of overhunting and habitat loss.
In April this year, Kislovskij shared the news of his capture on Facebook, calling it a “rare and unusual encounter.” The amateur photographer is a hobbyist and decided to buy a trail camera to better understand animals that live in the forest.
“When I came to check the camera, I couldn’t believe what I saw at first. I was really surprised to have captured such a shot and, of course, I was thrilled. At the same time, it was a bit unsettling to realise that a bear had recently been walking around in that same area,” Kislovskij tells Lithuanian news outlet LRT.
Kislovskij says that he had never even heard of a bear sighting in that area. While neighboring countries such as Latvia and Belarus have maintained their native bear species, Lithuania was thought to have lost theirs but that has changed recently after a bear cub was spotted in the northwest of the country.
Laimonas Daukša, director of the Lithuanian Hunters and Fishermen’s Association, called it a “special day for Lithuanian nature.”
“From now on, bears living in Lithuania, which were previously considered extinct, despite their regular visits to our nature, should also appear in the Red Book,” Daukša says per The Cool Down. “As far as I know, according to the current procedure, only leading species can be included in it, so we have the first bear cub that has opened a new page in this book.”
Bears are most definitely on the up in Lithuania. This summer, a female brown bear walked into the capital, Vilnius, creating a sensational story. The government issued a kill permit for the bear but hunters refused to shoot and she wandered safely back into the forest.
Trail cameras are great at sighting rare species that are not well-known about. Last month, a camera trap in Pakistan caught a sand cat that is listed as “possibly extinct” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
And last week, PetaPixel featured the work of photographer Lauren Grabelle who used a trail camera to capture dreamy photos of deer.