Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

U.S popular scientific-journalistic «Natural History» journal published an extensive article about Caspian seal.

Material titled «Now Way Out» was published in the May issue of the world famous edition. Article author is Head of the Department of Public Relations of ANAS Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG), science journalist Said Huseynov.

The author for four months conducted journalistic research on the basis of long researches, which were conducted by scientists of the Caspian countries, England, Holland and Japan. Bringing together the results of scientific studies published in scientific journals, in the article form, S.Huseynov presented it in the magazine «Natural History».

A special place in the material is occupied the results obtained during the research and observations, which for 45 years led by the director of the H. Zardabi Natural History Museum of ANAS, PhD in biology Tariel Heybatov. The article notes that, over the past 120 years of unregulated hunting, pollution and other factors led to the fact that, the number of Caspian seals decreased from 1 million to 104 thousand. If at the end of the 1990s, for every 2 square kilometers of sea accounted for 1 seal, but now for every 4 square kilometers, there are 1 seal.

The rate of decline was sufficient for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to change the Caspian seal’s status on its Red List of Threatened Species from “Vulnerable,” which it had been since 1996, to “Endangered.”

The article also describes the hard work which is led by Azerbaijan in this direction, signed by President Ilham Aliyev in connection with this problem of important documents, the implementation of specific measures, including the order of the Head of State on establishment of the Caspian Research center by initiative of the President of ANAS, Academician Akif Alizadeh.

In conclusion of article noted that, the geological processes which have happened 5 million years ago and created the territory of distribution of the Caspian seals haven't considered their future.

Currently, the Caspian Sea and the seals suffer from increasingly growing human influence.

Note that, the article is the third performance of S.Guseynov in the «Natural History» journal.

Five years ago, in the above publication was printed material of the author dedicated to the fauna and flora of Binagadi cemetery of the Quaternary period, and in 2012 - the material on the impact of global climate change on the Caspian Sea.

http://nhmag.com/features/072948/no-way-out

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