« The Bottom Line: Saving Sea Turtles is Good for the Economy | Main | The Best Bird Boxes in Britain: A City in the Sky »
March 10, 2005
World record White Stork Donna electrocuted
Belgium, 10 March 2005 - Six years after she was satellite-tagged as a chick, Donna the White Stork has been killed by power lines. Hatched in Belgium, the much-travelled Donna had left her wintering grounds in southern Spain, and died as she reached her breeding site in the Calvados region of France.
Wim Van den Bossche, leader of the Storks Without Borders project, followed Donna's progress for the 2,033 days of her life after she started her first autumn migration. Wim says Donna was the world-record holder in the young science of satellite-tracking birds. "No other bird has been tracked on a daily basis for such a long period. Donna provided us with a mass of unique scientific data."
White Stork from the Surfbirds Galleries by James Packer
Donna left Seville in Southern Spain on the 11 February, stopped off near Madrid for ten days, and reached Calvados on the 4 March. The next day local stork specialist Alain Chartier found her dead under power lines near the estuary of the river Seine. Alain says she was in prime breeding condition.
"Electrocution and collision with power lines are the main known causes of death among White Storks," Wim reports. "Along migration routes, up to 59 percent of dead storks and 90 percent of wounded storks examined by researchers have hit wires." Storks can live up to 30 years.
Wim says that "bird-friendly" alterations to power lines can reduce stork mortality. Plastic caps and tubes can be fitted quickly and cheaply to existing pylons, poles and cables, and guidelines are available to ensure that new power lines present the minimum risk to birds.
The White Stork Ciconia ciconia is one of the most recognisable and well-loved birds of Europe, partly due to its habit of nesting in close proximity to people on tops of buildings. It is a widespread summer visitor to much of Europe, which constitutes >75% of its global breeding range. Its European breeding population is large (>180,000 pairs), but underwent a large decline between 1970-1990. Although the species experienced a moderate increase overall during 1990-2000-with stable or increasing trends across most of Europe-its population has not yetrecovered to the level that preceded its decline.
Storks Without Borders is a project involving Natuurpunt (one of two organisations forming BirdLife in Belgium, with Natagora), Nature Centre Zwin, Animal Parc Planckendael and the Flemish Government. Since 1999, the project has tagged 23 storks and tracked their movements from Belgium to the wintering quarters in Spain/Portugal and Western Africa. Website: www.storks.be
BirdLife International is a global alliance of conservation organisations working in more than 100 countries which, together, are the leading authority on the status of birds, their habitats and the issues and problems affecting bird life.
For more on the risk to birds and what can be done about it, see the report Caution: Electrocution, prepared by NABU (BirdLife in Germany): http://www.cms.int/bodies/COP/cop7/list_of_docs/pdf/en/caution_electrocu
tion.pdf
Posted by Surfbirds at March 10, 2005 07:35 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)