Conservation and Research work for 2008

2008 will be a busy year for the conservation and research work at the Trust. A number of projects are still running from previous years, and there are some new ones that will begin this year.

Tawny Owls

The first stage of this post-release monitoring project is complete. Over the previous three years it has been pleasing to get results showing that the survival of the owls rehabilitated at the Trust is high. The next stage, starting in 2008, will examine the role of supplementary feeding post-release. Over the next two years the owls will be released from a mobile release aviary that is provisioned with food for a set period after released. The owls will be tagged again, and the extent to which they return to the aviary to eat the supplementary food will be monitored. The results should be interesting.

Hospital research

Following on from the Tawny Owls, we will be tracking more rehabilitated birds once they have been released. Depending on the number and types of admissions to the hospital, this year we plan to tag and monitor 12 patients once they are returned to the wild. The results will combine with those from other research projects, and also help refine the rehabilitation methods used at the Trust.

The project monitoring the effects of people on patients in the hospital, started last year by Ludovic Jégousse, will continue. Ludovic did some important work on this project – developing the monitoring protocol and ‘breaking the back’ of a multivariate problem. With more data, we expect to see some clear results.

Analysis of the injured bird records will continue, as 2007 was another busy year for the hospital. Understanding where, when, why and how many raptors are injured is an important part of conservation management. It can also contribute to an understanding of population trends in the wild for the species that arrive at the hospital.

Fund-a-Bird

2008 sees the official start of Fund-a-Bird, the Trust’s major conservation project for four species of raptor in the UK – Barn Owl, Kestrel, Tawny Owl and Little Owl. Apart from the direct conservation work of nest box provision and monitoring, which the Trust has been helping with for a couple of years, there are a range of research topics associated with this project. Click here for more details of the Fund-a-Bird Project.

On Park research

Additional behavioural studies on birds at the Trust are due for 2008. Each year we host a variety of research students, and the projects they carry out all contribute to a greater understanding of how we care for the birds at the Trust – particularly from a behavioural enrichment perspective.

A student from Sparsholt College will be conducting a diet and energy study in 2008. The results from this research should combine with a project done last year on flight energetics and what is termed ‘accelerometry’ by researchers from the University of Birmingham.

Although not raptor-related, we hoping this year to run a first survey of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) around the park. One of our work experience students from the University of Reading in 2007 has keen interest in this area, and has agreed to do a base-line survey, possibly as part of her degree project.

Vultures

The Gyps Vulture Restoration Project in Pakistan will continue through 2008 and coming years. Early 2008 will be an exciting time for the project, as the new breeding aviaries are due to be built in Pakistan and it is hoped that some more wild birds will be captured and added to the breeding programme. Numbers in the wild continue to decline, and each vulture that is brought in to captivity is another vulture made safe from poisoning.

African vultures have come into the conservation spotlight recently, with the IUCN/World Conservation Union ‘upgrading’ several species to higher categories of risk. Two of these are Trust project species:

The African White-backed Vulture is now listed as ‘Near Threatened’, and in common with most other vulture species, has declined by as much as 90% in West Africa. The vulture declines in West Africa are on par with what has happened in south Asia. Although the work of the Trust on this species focuses on southern Africa, all research related to the species contributes to conservation management.

The White-headed Vulture is now listed as ‘Vulnerable’, which is the first category of risk related to extinction. Compared with other vulture species, very little is known about the basic biology of White-headed Vultures. It has declined significantly in West Africa, and is almost completely confined to conservation areas in southern Africa. 2008 sees the start of a major conservation research project on this species, which will run for at least four years. The expected plan is to release back to the wild the White-headed Vultures that were confiscated by the authorities in Italy – several of which are living at the Trust.