14 Nov 2017
Danara Zharbolova and Alyona
Koshkina from our Kazakh partner ACBK tell us about their first attempts to
catch and tag the elusive White-headed Duck with geolocators out on the lakes
of the Central Kazakhstan.
The White-headed duck Oxyura leucocephala, with its long tail
(often cocked vertically) and striking blue bill, is an unmistakable sight – if
you are actually lucky enough to spot one out in the wild. European populations
have markedly declined in the last 10 years due to habitat loss, making this
famously elusive waterbird even more of a rarity. It is classified globally
Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Due to its furtive behaviour and rarity, this
species has not been studied extensively. In recent years, BirdLife and several
of its partners have been working to change this. In 2015, the White-headed
duck was selected as one of sixteen iconic European bird species for the
EU-funded LIFE
EuroSAP project
which aims to address population decline on a continental scale. SEO-BirdLife
Spain, together with AEWA (The African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement), has been
coordinating efforts to identify threats and conservation measures to feed into
a revised International Species Action Plan.
At the same time, BirdLife’s
Kazakh partner ACBK (Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of
Kazakhstan) has been working to learn more about the migration of the Central
Asia population which nests mainly in Northern and Central Kazakhstan and the
steppes of Southern Russia.
No comments:
Post a Comment