Making Switzerland a better place for birds

By Susan Misicka in Sempach

THIS CONTENT WAS PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 9, 2018 11:00 AM AUG 9, 2018 - 11:00

If you’re a crested tit in the woods, Switzerland is a great place to live. But if you’re a skylark you’re in trouble – mainly because of intense farming. The Swiss Ornithological Institute wants to improve habitats for all birds.

“It’s too tidy here; we get rid of small stones, trees and hedges because we don’t like to ‘waste’ any land,” says Sophie Jaquier, a biologist at the Swiss Ornithological Institute external link. She’s referring to Switzerland’s limited space for settlements, industry and agriculture. In addition to reducing the living area for birds that nest near the ground, this means less breeding ground for insects – essential for the diets of most birds. The use of pesticides and also herbicides is making it worse. “Insects need these ‘weeds’,” points out Jaquier.

And while Swiss woodland birds are doing well thanks to growing forests and deadwood, species that live in agricultural zones are losing out.

“Skylarks, for example, breed on the ground, and they like medium-high, medium-dense vegetation,” says Jaquier of the brown songbirds whose numbers have plummeted by a third since 1990.

Read on  

Swiss Customs Catch Man With 25 Parrot Eggs Hidden in Underwear

Swiss customs caught a man hiding 25 parrot eggs in his underwear, leading them to uncover a smuggling operation of rare bird eggs worth 65,000 Swiss francs ($71,800).

Having just arrived from Sao Paulo, the man caught the attention of officials with his awkward gait and was apprehended, Beat Eugster of the Zurich customs office said.

“He was wearing very wide trousers, and because he was walking so strangely the agents decided to stop him,” Eugster said by telephone today. “The agents thought he might have been carrying drugs.”

In the course of the investigation, authorities discovered several hundred birds, some of which were endangered species. An accomplice was found with seven rare parrots valued at 80,000 francs, Eugster said.

In total, the man smuggled more than 150 rare eggs to Indonesia, Mexico and Thailand, the customs office said, adding that it was unable to determine the origin of the eggs.

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Swiss recovery programme shows increase in bird species

Over the past ten years the population of Little Owl in Switzerland has increased after a sharp decline. Hoopoe has more than doubled and Corncrake has come back at the level of breeding species after almost reaching the level of extinction in the 1990’s. These are some of the results of the Swiss Species Recovery Program for Birds.

This programme, which was launched in 2003 by SVS/BirdLife Switzerland together with the Swiss Ornithological Institute and the Federal Office for the Environment, provides safe species-specific nesting sites and improves or creates habitats providing sufficient food. A common coordination unit is partly based in Zurich, at SVS/BirdLife Switzerland and in Sempach, at the Ornithological Institute.

At the beginning of the programme a sound analysis of the target species was made. Endangered species were only included if they were not naturally rare (e.g. at the edge of the breeding area). A next step was the realisation of an assessment aiming at measuring the sufficiency and relevancy of the existing conservation measures in habitats and sites for the conservation of these species, or if they needed additional measures. The result was that 50 priority species were in need of specific measures, which would be delivered by the programme.

During the last ten years actions in the field have been carried out for 30 species and six official action plans were produced; the first ones for species conservation in Switzerland. The action plans should give the programme even more strength and extend its outcomes to more than 50 species.

For more information, please contact: Werner Müller and Raffael Ayé


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