Resources of wild ungulates in the Russian Federation

The preservation and rational use of hunting resources is the main task of the hunting industry in Russia. In order to assess the state of hunting resources, it is necessary to analyze the number and hunted of animals. The purpose of the research was to analyze the state of wild ungulate resources in the Russian Federation, the dynamics of their numbers and hunted both in the Russian Federation as a whole and in the context of federal districts. The state of the dynamics of the population size (from 2011 to 2022) and hunted (in the hunting seasons of 2012–2013 and 2021–2022) of the main species of wild ungulates, such as elk, European and Siberian roe deer, sika and red deer, wild boar in hunting grounds of the Russian Federation has been considered the paper. An analysis of the number of these ungulates was carried out in the context of federal districts of the Russian Federation in 2022. It is shown that the largest number of ungulates lives in the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts. In the European part of the Russian Federation, namely in the Central Federal District, the largest number of elk is concentrated in the Yaroslavl Region, roe deer and red deer is in the Smolensk region, sika deer is in the Kaluga region. In the Northwestern Federal District, a large number of elk is concentrated in the Vologda region; roe deer is in the Pskov and Kaliningrad regions, sika deer lives only in the Kaliningrad region. A tendency towards an increase in the number, as well as the hunted of elk, roe deer, sika and red deer in hunting grounds of the Russian Federation has been noted. It should be noted that the dynamics of the number and hunted of wild boar in hunting grounds of the Russian Federation is rapidly declining.