The newspaper Pulse — Northern Primorye told about Ajva, this story was picked up by regional media. Today the dog is a regional celebrity

The nursery of rare crane species in the Ryazan region has been replenished with “fresh blood". And this event is very serious, because sturgeons or as they are also called white cranes are endangered. This bird is endemic to Russia. The main part of the sterch nests in Yakutia. There are very few of them left in Western Siberia. 

In the Ryazan region the nursery was created to preserve the gene pool of endangered cranes. A nursery is not just a house of sterkhs, it is an opportunity for their offspring to return to nature.

The scale of the expedition, which took place under the federal project "Conservation of biological diversity and development of ecological tourism", was not a joke. The work on the search for sterch eggs was carried out in Yakutia in the Kytalyk National Park. The expedition included employees of the Research Institute "Ecology", the Oksky Reserve, the Institute of Cryolithozone of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences of Yakutsk, Rosprirodnadzor of Yakutia and the national park Kytalyk. 

- The nests were searched for three days with the help of a light aircraft and on June 21 they started collecting eggs, says Kirill Postelnykh, head of the nursery. - However, not all the nests were found a second time, because the white incubating birds left the nest in advance, which is very difficult to see from a height. They flew up to the nest by helicopter and took only one egg. All this was done as quickly as possible in order to disturb the birds less.  

As a result we managed to collect seven eggs. They were placed in a special transport box, where the incubation temperature was maintained with the help of hot water bottles. The way was not close: through Yakutsk, Moscow to the small village of Brykin Bor in the Ryazan region.

In the Moscow region Kirill Postelnykh, who has already fully taken care of the eggs, was in for a surprise. All bridges over the Oka River were blocked, so instead of the usual six hours, he spent all twelve on the road. The first chick hatched under Kolomna. This inspired hope that the eggs had survived a long journey in the noise and vibration of a helicopter, airplane and car. 

By the beginning of July five sturgeons were born in the Oka Nature Reserve. The chicks were fed like babies every three hours. They walked twice a day in the floodplain forest, taught how to catch insects and shellfish and pick berries. Volunteers helped in this troublesome and continuous work. The process was led by headmother - a researcher at the nursery Tatyana Kozhanova.

For the first two months the sturgeons lived in individual enclosures, saw each other only through glass and immediately rushed into a fight. This is their peculiarity due to life in the north. The opponent must be driven out of his territory in order to get more food and survive. And in the nursery a transparent partition made it possible for the birds to get to know each other, but not to harm each other. Here in the Oka Nature Reserve the chicks began to fly.

 Well, the next step was the unification of new settlers from Yakutia into married couples. It is important that the birds are unrelated. 

By the way, the young sterkhs were named after the Yakut lakes:  Bakyl, Nyanakh, Soluntakh, Kyllakh, Suturuk.

Photos from the archive of the Oka Nature Reserve

Ruhaifi Isiraf Saad and Siti Aisha Zainul live with their pets in the city of Kuantan.

The story took place in the Novgorod region. During one of the stages of the Memory Watch in the Starorussky district, the Novgorod search party "Courage" came across a unique find. Animal bones lay next to the remains of Soviet soldiers, Novgorod search engines write.

The excavations were carried out near the former military positions of the Great Patriotic War. According to the found straps with buckles identical to the dog harness, ampoules, pillboxes, an aluminum case with powder and ointment, the search engines assumed that a canvas pouch or a bag with medicines was strapped on the dog. That is, in front of them were the remains of not a simple tailed one who could have joined the squad, but a specially trained dog-orderly who saved the lives of the fighters.

- We often find the remains of animals, these are usually horses, cows, birds, and they (bones) are fragmentary, most likely these animals were eaten, - said Dmitry Toporkov, commander of the search party “Courage".  - But here are the remains of a dog orderly, and even in full uniform, we found for the first time. Of course, it touched us all to the core.  

The search engines decided to perpetuate the memory of the four-legged soldier. We chipped in money, ordered materials and made a full-length monument to the dog. We installed this memorial sign not far from the place of discovery so that everyone could see - not only our guys died here, but also another full-fledged fighter of the medical unit - an orderly dog.

In total, during the years of the Great Patriotic War, more than 68 thousand dogs were called to the front. These are sappers, saboteurs, bombers, signalers, scouts, and, of course, orderlies. Orderly dogs searched for wounded soldiers on the battlefield, in forests and swamps and brought help to them. They also carried small backpacks with medicines for first aid. According to official data, orderly dogs pulled more than 700,000 wounded soldiers from the battlefield.

Photos from the personal archive of Dmitry Toporkov and the search party “Courage".