New publication in British Birds: From migration counts to conservation in a raptor flyway under threat
Backdrop photo by David Erterius. British Birds cover photo by Bart Hoekstra.
We are proud to announce the current August issue of British Birds contains a long paper on Batumi Raptor Count. It summarises the 12-year history of BRC, provides a detailed description of a typical autumn migration season, and outlines some of our education and conservation plans for the future.
Abstract
Since 2008, the Batumi Raptor Count project has monitored the autumn migration of raptors at Batumi, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea in southwest Georgia. What started as an expedition by young birders has become an invaluable project for monitoring raptor populations in the little-studied east African– Palearctic flyway. Autumn raptor migration through the Batumi bottleneck is notable for globally important concentrations of Honey-buzzards Pernis apivorus, Montagu’s Circus pygargus, Pallid C. macrourus and Marsh Harriers C. aeruginosus and accounts for at least 1% of the global breeding population of ten raptor species. By stimulating migration-based ecotourism, the project has had a significant economic impact on the communities where the count stations are located, which has increased societal and political support to reduce the widespread illegal raptor shooting in the region; it has also developed an important educational role for school children and older students. This paper summarises the 12-year history of the Batumi Raptor Count, and provides a detailed description of a typical autumn migration season. The project aims to expand its education and conservation remit while continuing to monitor one of the world’s biggest raptor migration bottlenecks.