The Accipiter - Vets Corner September 2006

Vet's Corner - September 2006

John Chitty, the park’s vet, gives us some insight into the healthcare and maintenance of raptors as well as the injuries and illnesses that they fall victim to, and how he treats them...

This month, John updates us on the Great Bustart program to which he introduced us in September last year.

Great Bustard Update

All seems quiet on the Great Bustard reintroduction project this year. The reason is simple – they just haven’t arrived yet!

We anticipated problems with avian influenza this year – Russia has had cases while we have not. However, these have been coped with. The area from which we take the birds (near the Kazakhstan border) has not had any cases and the nearest ones are thousands of miles away. Our birds are brought into the Russian Field Station as eggs, hatched and the chicks reared in isolation in biosecure premises, so the chances of them having avian influenza are very small.

We also performed extensive testing on the chicks during our visit in July. We were very grateful that Ruth Manvell from VLA Weybridge (a leading expert on avian influenza and a Hawk Conservancy member to boot!) accompanied us and took swabs from both ends of the chicks as well as a blood sample to look for antibodies (ie past exposure to the virus). All were negative!

We will also perform the usual rigorous testing on the birds in quarantine so the chances of importing and releasing anything nasty are extremely unlikely.

Other problems have centred round the issuing of import and export CITES licenses. As Charles Dickens may have put it…..”A Tale of Two Bureaucracies”!

Certainly there appear to be no problems on conservation grounds. We were delighted to welcome representatives of Birdlife International to the egg collection this Spring. They appeared very impressed with group’s activities in Russia. After an initial period where they wanted us to try other means of nest conservation (ie methods of protecting the nest after the female bustard has been disturbed by farm machinery, rather than just collecting the eggs) they were quick to acknowledge that these efforts were unsuccessful. In other words our egg collection methods have no impact on the wild population as, if left, all nests were rapidly predated! Incidentally, it is important to stress that these methodologies and the egg collection isn’t actually instigated by the Great Bustard Group. The Russian authorities have been aware of the problems in nest predation and damage for many years. Therefore they have been collecting eggs (the maximum numbers are tightly controlled) for many years – the Great Bustard Group has just been very lucky in being able to “hijack” the chick rearing for our own purposes!!

However, we are confident that all the problems appear to be resolving and the birds should be in the UK in the next few weeks. There will be many fewer birds than the last two years – at the moment we plan to bring in just nine. There are various reasons for this:

A hard winter in the region (temperatures dropped well below -40ºC for long periods) meant that fertility rates were very poor
This was combined with a very hot spell during egg collection so there was a slight increase in egg mortality.
The investigations into methods of protecting nests meant that some eggs that would have been protected ended up being predated. This was a shame but it is always important to check that the project is not having an adverse effect on the Russian population
As in previous years some chicks were not deemed suitable for export and release

Last year’s birds appear to still be doing well in the wild. Some have returned to the release site while some are still in Dorset. Others have been seen over the south of England including one bird last sighted in France!

Click here for previous Vet's Corner articles