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Turkey's 'wild ones'



 
 
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Old March 7th, 2008, 07:22 AM posted to rec.travel.budget.backpack,rec.travel.europe,soc.culture.turkish,rec.travel.asia
T.R.H.
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Default Turkey's 'wild ones'

x0x Turkey's 'wild ones'

[See more on this subject by visiting the pages
selected for you by Anita Donohoe:
http://www.TurkRadio.us/k/yaban/

By HALiM DiKER

Desert monitor, dormouse, lynx, Egyptian mongoose.
Their names may be new to most of us, but they are
not new to Anatolia.

As the snowflakes build up like sugar raining from
the sky, I watch them fall under the towering
Scotch pines in temperatures approaching minus
twenty Centigrade. A pair of eyes in the brush
warm my heart.

Every now and then he breaks off a shoot from the
birch tree, devours it and sets to staring at me
again. No doubt he's wondering if I'm a hunter. He
approaches me gradually, pausing first under a
tree to brush off the snow with his spindly legs
before starting to gnaw the yellowed grass. Then
he comes even closer. There is only ten meters
between us now. It's my first time to see a
dewy-eyed roe deer up this close. He is just one
of the many wild animals that live in Turkey.

Many became extinct long ago, others are on the
verge. Cheetahs no longer kick up the Anatolian
dust. Tigers no longer chase deer. But fallow
deer, hyenas, monitor lizards, lynxes, wild sheep
and others continue to inhabit Turkey's mountains,
forests, and rock cliffs.

What would you say to leaving modern life behind
briefly and making a foray into the wild?

WILD SHEEP: UNIQUE TO ANATOLIA

The roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) is a wild
animal that prefers to live in beech, birch or
hornbeam forests and meadowlands, its habitat in
Turkey being the coastal forests of Thrace and the
Black Sea region. With their enormous ears and
beautiful, highly sensitive eyes, these animals
can run swiftly even in snow or dense brush. The
forests of the western Black Sea and the Marmara
and Aegean regions are protected areas for deer.
Spotted yellow in color with short, palmate
antlers, fallow deer (Cervus dama) are the most
graceful and elegant of this entire mammal
species. Once boasting a large population in the
forests of Manavgat and Adana-Catalan, they are
now rarely seen there.

A hundred or so fallow deer are struggling to
survive in Antalya's Duzlercami forest. The wild
sheep (Ovis gmelinii anatolica), which is unique
to Turkey, is the sole member of its species. The
females are hornless, a trait which makes them the
acknowledged ancestor of the domestic sheep.

Wild sheep, which inhabit open terrain and
steppes, live in a protected area at Bozdag in
Konya province. The Persian wild sheep (Ovis
gmelinii gmelinii) meanwhile is found in very
small numbers in the mountains of Agri, Van and
Hakkari near the border with Iran.

Among the mammals there is one wild animal, the
red goat (Capra aegrarus), which manages to
survive with ease, thanks to its habitat in very
steep and rocky terrain. The curved horn mountain
goat (Rupicara rupicara) is not so fortunate
however. These goats, which generally inhabit the
higher elevations of forests, survive only in the
mountains of Tunceli and Erzincan.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEOPARDS GONE?

Predators like the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), the
lion (Panthera leo) and the striped hyena (Hyaena
hyaena) once inhabited the plains of Urfa near the
border with Syria, a landscape reminiscent of
Africa. By the end of the 19th century only the
latter survived and then only in small numbers.

They too are now battling extinction in the
isolated rock canyons and deep valleys of the
Mediterranean and Southeastern Anatolia. But the
real blow levelled against the hyena, whose
numbers have diminished due to unregulated
hunting, was the poisonous meat left by nomads to
protect their sheep from marauding wolves. The
wolves (Canis lupus) and hyenas that consumed this
meat suffered a rapid decline in numbers; yet
Turkey remains home to one of Europe's largest and
healthiest wolf populations. Over 7000 wolves are
thought to inhabit the country's steppes and
mountainous regions. Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and
jackals (Canis aureus) also inhabit Turkey in
large numbers. While foxes are encountered almost
all over the country, jackals are found in
forested and marshy areas along the shores of
rivers, lakes and the sea in the Marmara, Aegean
and Mediterranean regions. Turkey's last tiger is
said to have been hunted in 1970 in Uludere
township of Sirnak province, and the last
Anatolian leopard in Ankara-Beypazari in 1974. It
is also uncertain whether the Caspian tiger
(Panthera tigris virgata), the largest of the
carnivorous cats, survives in Turkey or not,
although close to twenty Anatolian leopards
(Panthera pardus tulliana) are stil thought to
inhabit the country. Lynxes are the most prized of
the cats that, in small numbers, are waging a
desperate struggle to survive. Usually preferring
rocky or forested areas far from human habitation,
they are encountered in the forests of the Black
Sea, Istranca and Eastern Anatolia, and in forests
and thickets in the steep rock cliffs of the
Marmara and Mediterranean regions. Grizzly bears
(Ursus arctos), meanwhile, which inhabit remote
mountainous areas where humans never tread, make
their home mainly in the Black Sea region and the
forests of Eastern Anatolia as well as in areas
remote to human settlement in Southeastern
Anatolia and the Marmara region. Another wild
animal that is waging a struggle to survive in the
Southeast is the Persian gazelle (Gazella
subgutturosa), famous for its slender legs,
delicate antlers and dark eyes outlined in black.
Efforts are under way to breed this graceful
animal, whose numbers are now so small as to be
almost non-existent, in a protected area
appropriately named Ceylanpinar (Gazelle Spring).

TIME IS RUNNING OUT

The dormouse is a rare species of the Rodent
(Gliridae) family whose preferred habitats are the
old oak forests, fruit orchards, thickets and
riverbanks of Thrace and Canakkale. The Turkish
name of this animal, 'yediuyur' (literally 'seven
sleeps'), derives from its seven-month hibernation
period from mid-October to mid-April. Yet another
wild animal that survives in Anatolia is the wild
boar (Sus scrofa). Wild boars, which stir up the
earth and eat harmful insects, thereby
contributing to the healthy development of
forests, multiply very rapidly, which also makes
them a major source of food for predatory mammals.
Turkey's wildlife is of course not limited to
those enumerated above. There is the porcupine
(Hystrix indica), which inhabits the mountains of
the Mediterranean and Southeastern Anatolia; the
Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon), which
drags its long, hairy brown tail on the ground;
the desert monitor (Varanus griseus), Turkey's
largest species of lizard, which is more than a
meter long, can run 60 km per hr and is
encountered in very small numbers only in the sand
flats of Urfa, and more. But time is running out.

Wild animals in nature are declining in number.
The General Directorate of Hunting and Wildlife
and the various environmental protection
organizations are developing projects to protect
and breed these animals. But they nevertheless
face a constant threat of extinction due to
illegal hunting and loss of habitat as well as
death by poisoning. Wildlife will only continue to
survive in Turkey's mountains, forests and steppes
to the extent that we can persuade people that it
is an important part of nature and that it will
not threaten human food sources as long as we do
not upset the natural balance.

-------------------------------------------------
 




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