Despite the urban sprawl and traffic jams, Moscow is home to many rare wild animals and birds. RT joined specially trained animal trackers on their winter route.

Famous for its icy climate, winter is a very special time in Russia: a perfect time for its acclaimed icy swims and snow sports. It is also ideal for tracking a rich natural resource: wildlife.

In Moscow, from late January to early March, winter route tracking takes place across parks. It is something that has carried on through political, social and economic revolutions across the land.

“For decades, we would examine the spread of the species across all of the Russian territory,” Vladimir Krever, from the World Wildlife Fund, told RT. “Thousands of people participated in monitoring elk, wild boar, foxes, wolves and hares. That was how we decided our hunting quotas and what had to be protected, like tigers or leopards.”

Though no tigers or leopards appear around Moscow, there are plenty of species whose existence is in a precarious situation. The trackers follow the same route each year, keeping track of hunted animals, namely foxes, hares, squirrels, weasels, and ermine.

Biodiversity expert Alexander Smirnov, who works in Moscow’s Kuzminki-Lyublino park, says the process is simple.

“On the first day, we wipe away all existing tracks,” Smirnov told RT. “And the next day, we cover the same route, and record new tracks along it. Then we make our calculations based on these tracks. Last year, we discovered a rare species, the grey partridge – a good start for our records.”

It is recognizing the tracks for what they are that can prove daunting. For this he uses his book as a back-up reference.

“There are certain field indicators you can use to teach people to read tracks,” Smirnov told RT. “Once you learn this you can even tell by the tracks how a fox is feeling today, whether it’s had a good hunting day, or whether it’s looking for a place to relax after a big meal.”

The number of animals found within a population, specifically birds, is often a direct correlation to the health of the human population. This is because the more happy healthy humans you have to take care of the animals, specifically to feed them, the more of them survive.

The perfect examples are the web-footed citizens of the city. Their history in the ponds and reservoir, tells an expected tale of post-Soviet Moscow.

“Moscow is a very complicated mechanism,” Yury Buyvolov, from the Birds and People Club, told RT. “Birds, water-birds in particular, are one of the indicators of the city’s level of social tension. In the turbulent and troubling 1990s, ducks almost disappeared. Only 10,000 ducks were left.”

Usually, they tend to stay in places close to humans, because their ration is largely dependent on what people bring them.

The state and volunteers count the 25 different species of feathered friends bobbing along in reservoirs and the Moskva, Yauza, and Setun rivers. These do not freeze over and the ducks stay here for the winter.

“Now, people are better off, and they take time to feed ducks,” Buyvolov told RT. “We now have 20,000 ducks staying in Moscow in the winter. Ducks that were born here in Moscow are residents of this city just like us.”

Keeping track of birds and other small animals in a megapolis the size of Moscow may not appear to be important. However, maintaining this database through years of turbulent change has proven to be about much more than doing the animals a favor, it has also proven to be a key to the wellbeing of people.