Biotechnics
Biotechnics
a complex of measures directed toward an increase in the supply of useful animals and the improvement of their productive properties. The term “biotechnics” appeared in the 1930’s in the USSR, where work on the protection and development of game animals in natural conditions was widely developed. The organization of effective protection (through the creation of game preserves, reserves, and State hunting and fishing reserves, the establishment of hunting seasons for animals, the banning of hunting for specified periods, and other measures) and the introduction of biotechnical measures permitted the restoration and increase of the numbers of many valuable types of animals, birds, and fish that had been almost completely destroyed by predatory hunting in prerevolutionary Russia.
Biotechnical measures have the goal of (1) increasing the supply of hunting animals through the improvement of the food base (by planting and sowing food plants in hunting lands and reservoirs and by feeding the animals), the improvement of protective and nesting conditions (by planting trees and shrubs, sowing tall grasses for cover, constructing protective places such as clearings surrounded by thorn bushes), the creation of refuge areas in quiet, rarely visited sites, the construction of burrows and other shelters for various animals, the destruction of harmful predators, the fight against animal diseases, the reacclimatization of animals, birds, and fish to their former habitat regions, and the introduction of valuable wild animals from other countries into the fauna of the country; and (2) improving the productive capacities of game animals (raising the pelt quality of fur animals and the meat quality of hoofed animals and game birds, increasing the body size of fish, and so on). This includes selection (breeding of animals according to predetermined requirements and the selection of mating pairs with the goal of strengthening useful characteristics in descendants, crossbreeding and hybridization, and using mutated forms that have valuable productive properties), as well as the creation of conditions which encourage development of the animals’ productive capacities.
Large contributions to biotechnics have been made by such modern scientists as B. M. Zhitkov, P. A. Manteifel’, S. I. Ognev, N. P. Lavrov, S. P. Naumov, B. A. Kuznetsov, I. N. Arnol’d, A. N. Eleonskii, V. P. Vrasskii, V. A. Movchan, and G. V. Nikol’skii. In the USSR, the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Game Management and Animal Breeding and other scientific institutions are concerned with work on the scientific problems of biotechnics and the introduction of their solutions into the practice of game management. Much experience in the processing and realization of various biotechnical measures has been amassed in the hunting and fishing reserves of many foreign countries (the USA, England, France, Canada, Finland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, and others).
REFERENCES
Kolosov, A. M. Biotekhniia. Moscow, 1965.Dement’ev, V. I. Biotekhnicheskie meropriiatiia ν okhotnich’em khoziaistve. Leningrad, 1966.
Kuznetsov, B. A. Biotekhnicheskie meropriiatiia ν okhotnich’em khoziaistve. Moscow, 1967.
Kolosov, A. M., and N. P. Lavrov. Obogashchenie promyslovoi fauny SSSR. Moscow, 1968.
B. A. KUZNETSOV