News: Short & sweet / archive
July to September 2023

1st Cyprus report: The ongoing massive bird slaughter in autumn is increasingly shifting from bird poaching with illegal trapping gear (limesticks and mist nets) to illegal bird hunting activities
During the first ten days of the Cyprus Autumn 2023 Bird Protection Camp of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) and the Foundation Pro Biodiversity (SPA), our unspoken fears for the autumn bird migration season have sadly been confirmed. Illegally operating bird poachers and bird hunters in Cyprus are now compensating for the significantly reduced bird catch in spring with massive bird slaughter activities during autumn bird migration.
 
However, it has given us great satisfaction to catch and report a poacher whom we have been after, without success, since 2015. Although our activists have dismantled and destroyed hundreds of illegal limesticks at his illegal trapping site over the past eight years, this is the first time we have caught him personally red-handed. We can now remove him from our 'wanted list', but we will continue to keep his trapping site under close observation!

Among the bird poachers our activists have already caught this autumn is a poacher we have caught and reported four times in the past ten years. He has been let off lightly each time with a fine of between 200-400 euros. On this occasion as well, he will regrettably only be fined 200 euros for possessing prohibited limesticks.
 
It now seems that an increase in illegal hunting activities is offsetting the decline in illegal bird trapping. Bird hunters have less to fear from our operations, as weapons can be quickly concealed or packed away, and they can leave the hunting site at top speed in their nearby parked SUVs!
 
In our 2nd Cyprus Bird Protection Camp Report, we will report the continued successful operations of our activists against illegal bird hunters.
 
First results of the Cyprus Autumn 2023 Bird Protection Camp (03.09 - 13.09.2023)
 
Bird Trappers

• 11 active bird trapping sites found
• 141 illegal limesticks dismantled
• 2 electronic bird callers removed
• 5 criminal charges brought against illegal bird poachers 

Bird Hunters

• 8 hunting sites with illegal activities found
• 5 electronic bird callers removed
• 1 criminal charge brought against an illegal bird hunter 

Regrettably, due to the increasing decline in the European Turtle Dove, which is on the Red List as 'critically endangered’ in Germany and many EU countries, illegal bird hunters are now concentrating on the colourful and strictly protected European Bee-eaters and Golden Orioles.

Five long months of Bonelli's Eagle protection camp operations in the mountains of Sicily brought remarkable results and extraordinary experiences!
With our project funding commitment of 8,000 euros, the extensive organisational preparations for this year's Bonelli's Eagle protection camp in Sicily began in January 2023, with the operational work in the mountainous regions of Sicily starting in March.

For the first time, Lanner Falcon breeding sites, a bird of prey threatened with extinction, were included in the surveillance of eyries and nests and on the more than 250 inspection trips to remote locations. For the 25 volunteer eagle conservationists, this involved a lot of additional, time-consuming deployment time, as Lanner Falcons react to even minor disturbances in the vicinity of the nest by abandoning their brood. Unfortunately, in the past, professional and amateur bird photographers, with their urge to take perfect photos of birds of prey, were repeatedly the cause of such brood losses, which threatened the existence of this beautiful falcon species.

Our teams monitored 65 Bonelli's Eagle eyries and observed breeding activity at 52 locations. A total of 53 young eagles successfully fledged from 33 eyries. This result represents the most successful fledging of young Bonelli's Eagles on Sicily since eagle protection camp work began in 2012!

The report of an Egyptian Vulture eyrie with a single adult bird unexpectedly interrupted the routine monitoring of the Bonelli's Eagle and Lanner Falcon eyries and nests. The following day, a search of the area surrounding the eyrie found an adult bird killed in an accident. Saving the vulture brood was a labour of love for six of our volunteer conservationists. For several weeks, they set out daily vulture-friendly food near the eyrie, which the surviving adult bird also fetched regularly. The vulture protectors' efforts were crowned with success, as they observed a young vulture outside the eyrie on 27 July 2023. This breeding success cannot be overestimated as only 7-8 Egyptian Vulture breeding pairs survive in the whole of Italy!

After 15 years of patient education and information to protect our mountain meadows without any noticeable or visible effect, it was high time for positive action!

Here, as well, in the southern Harz Mountains, hundreds of flowering plants, orchids, bluebells, Brown Knapweeds, gentians and many other flowering plants find a survival habitat on our property in the Rüdigsdorf Alps near Nordhausen that elsewhere has long since been destroyed by massive gypsum mining in the Nordhausen area.
 
The result of traditional, extensive farm use of meadows as hay meadows or mowing pastures, a natural paradise of the first order, is an ecological habitat rarity. Here the complete variety and splendour of nutrient-avoiding flowering plants were able to develop over the centuries.

All of these plants have their very specialised cohorts in the insect kingdom, including more than 300 species of beetles, wild bees and butterflies that use the rich pollen and nectar of the sunlit rough meadow areas, as well as bird species that have become rare such as the Yellowhammer, Corn Bunting and Red-backed Shrike, as well ensuring the survival of moth-hunting bats.
 
But this ecologically valuable biotope we acquired 15 years ago, with the help of donations to ensure its permanent protection, was increasingly threatened and destroyed over the past ten years through misuse by leisure activities. Despite our ownership of the area, illegal barbecuing took place, unauthorised picnic benches were erected, rubbish was dumped, and the soil of the mountain meadows and their vegetation was severely eroded by mountain bike, motorcycle and quad riders.
 
Since the spring of this year, things have changed, and, finally, peace has come to the mountain again; the time of senseless motorised roving on the mountain meadows is over. With the approval of the lower nature conservation authority of the district of Nordhausen, the meadows are now robustly protected at our expense. Large boulders block off the uncontrolled crisscross vehicle tracks and footpaths on the mountain meadows, and electric fences additionally safeguard the areas where semi-wild old cattle breeds that now graze on our property.
 
Our animal 'landscapers' also react robustly to human disturbance of their pastures. Not only we ourselves but also hikers on the well-marked paths are amazed at how quickly nature, with its variety of flora and fauna, has taken over again the now undisturbed mountain meadow areas in the Rüdigsdorf Alps, which are already a designated nature conservation area.

Sicily early August 2023 … and the migratory waders and birds of the Northern European coasts and wetlands are already making a stop-over in our Pantani Migratory bird sanctuary
The migratory bird species of the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts and the Northern European wetlands, as far as the tundra, behave differently than people commonly believe. The autumn bird migration southwards begins at the end of July, as they set off towards the Mediterranean and North African coasts.

Here, in our Pantani Cuba & Longarini migratory bird sanctuary, which has meanwhile grown to an area of 412 hectares on the south-east coast of Sicily, Paolo, one of our Bird Guards, records on camera that since Saturday, the 5th of August, 2023, at daytime temperatures of up to + 35° C and a lagoon water temperature of + 28° C, large flocks of migratory birds from the northern European coasts and wetlands have arrived here on Sicily for a restful stop-over.

The sanctuary is bursting at its seams. Thanks to the heavy winter rains of 2022/23, the lagoons still have high water levels and wide, wet shore areas, and there is plenty of food. Our complete fencing of the lagoons and surveillance by our Bird Guards ensure that there are no bird poachers in action far and wide.

During his morning bird count, Paolo observed Spotted Redshanks from as far north as Lapland and Siberia, Wood Sandpipers from the moors and swamps of the taiga regions of Scandinavia, Curlew Sandpipers from Siberia, and photographed Greenshank and Little Stints from Northern Europe. The latter breed in the tundra and coastal tundra, using the silt and mud areas on sea coasts and inland waters to rest and forage.

In the 284 ha of lagoon and shore areas of our migratory bird sanctuary that we have ecologically restored, the birds find the peace and privacy that people ruthlessly rob them of in the migratory bird hotspots on the islands in the European Union Mediterranean region where, In the worst case, millions are trapped, shot and slaughtered.

Small bodies of water not used commercially are veritable biodiversity hotspots
From January to the beginning of March 2023, together with our project partner, the Landscape Conservation Association West Saxony, more ecologically valuable trees and bushes adapted to the site were planted in the Hirschgrund-Wiesenbachtal near Oberlungwitz. In addition, two formerly intensively used fish ponds were improved, and six new standing water ponds were created. They provide a valuable new habitat for a variety of bird species, dragonflies, frogs and toads in the Hirschgrund.
 
Landscaping was completed punctually at the beginning of the breeding season, and although the newly created water bodies had only just filled with water and vegetation along the banks had just begun to grow, at the end of March, the first frogs and toads had taken up residence and had started spawning. With the germination of the freshly sown, site-adapted 'regio seeds' in the riparian areas, the new wetland habitats were settled by other species in spring and summer.
 
We discovered not only dragonflies and damselflies, including the Broad-Bellied Chaser, the Banded Demoiselle and the Eurasian Bluet, but also numerous tadpoles of the Common Spadefoot Toad, which is an endangered species in Saxony. Its tadpoles can reach a considerable size of up to 19 cm in length. The Black Stork circling in the sky, which had clearly discovered the new, easily accessible small bodies of water as a food source, was a pleasant surprise.
 
With the increase in the numbers of insects and tadpoles, as well as the introduction of whitefish spawn by ducks, other endangered wildlife species, such as the Crested Newt, Grass Snake and the Common Kingfisher, will benefit from this dynamic development and use the new small biotopes as habitat and food source.
 
Even though we are pleased about the rapid colonisation of wildlife species in these newly created biotopes, it also starkly demonstrates the increasing absence of such small-scale, near-natural wet habitats in today's cleared countryside.