Together for Storks
The Carpathian Basin, with its 10-12.000 breeding pairs, is an important breeding and migration area for the species. Its most important habitat in the Carpathian basin can be found on both side of the Hungarian-Romanian, Romanian-Yugoslavian and Yugoslavian-Hungarian border: approximatively half of the mentioned population live in this border area. However the environmental changes, mostly the intensification of excessive agriculture and habitat loss resulted in a decline of stork populations: in the Carpathian Basin – mainly in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia – the breeding population halved in the last century.
In August 1999, three organisations Milvus Group - Branch of the Romanian Ornithological Society/BirdLife Romania, Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society/BirdLife Hungary and the Bird Protection and Study Society from Voivodina) started a joint project called "White Stork Protection in the Carpathian basin". In all of the three countries the objective of the program is to exhaust all ways and means of helping and protecting storks. With a view to the expediency to lift onto special supports the nests built on electric pylons, we are pursuing mutual agreement with the Electricity Companies. It is also to the interest of these companies to have supports put out, since the bird perished between the wires and the sagging nest material can cause short circuit, which undoubtedly would result in serious damage.
The long distance survival of storks depends to a great extent on the availability of wet, moist territories (grasslands, pastures, floodlands). The purpose to pursue is to have these territories under protection, even if it means legal regulation, since they serve as habitat for a number of other protected species, as well. By no means would this entail the interruption of previously performed activities, much rather the proper use of these territories in accordance with their original function.
White storks breed and feed mainly near human settlements and because of this, the survival of the species depends mainly on human activities. In 1958 Marián Miklós, the Hungarian stork-project leader wrote: “the most effective protection comes from the love of the people for storks based on traditions”. The once popular, leggy bird has come to be an undesirable guest in most some places; people who moved to the cities have lost the love for nature, which used to be part of people's life back in the past. We consider that re-establishing this traditional loyalty is essential in protection of storks and even nature protection.
By means of instructional work, we would like to bring forth a change in the attitudes people have towards storks. Our educational work, including posters, booklets, nature films, and international drawing competitions for children, aims at strengthening the affection for nature and storks.
Precise and continuous report on the situation is of fundamental importance for the protective work to function effectively. It is essential to know the number of storks, where they live and the number of offsprings. For this very reason we carry out stork counts every year.
The international agreements, which our countries are also members of, are all designed to promote stork protection on an international scale, such are the Bern and the Bonn Conventions.
The White Stork Protection in the Carpathian Basin project intends to achieve the following goals:
1. Installation of special nest-supports for nests
on electric masts where they lack.
2. Monitoring the distribution, breeding performance and possible threats
of White Storks.
3. Monitoring the wetland areas and lobbying at the level of local authorities
to obtain local protection status for them.
4. Raising public awareness on Stork protection through rural local communities,
especially scholars and farmers.
5. Based on the conclusions drawn from the project a region-wide conservation
action plan for storks will be set up.
White Stork Protection in the Carpathian Basin is a cross-border cooperative environmental project, supported financially by the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe