Collaboration in the East African-Eurasian Flyway
The guests from WWF Türkiye and the Istanbul municipality visiting our team on Station 2.
Can, Kadri and Chemil with our chairman Tohar during an early morning on Station 1.
This year, the BRC had the honor of hosting three counters, Can Yeniyurt, Kadri Kaya, and Cemil Cezgin, from the brand-new Bosphorus bird migration count sites in Turkey. On top of that, we received six visitors from WWF Turkey and the Istanbul Municipality. The reason for this is that WWF Turkey conducted their first pilot migration counts at the famous Bosphorus corridor this year. Using two watch sites on the northeastern and southeastern side of the Bosphorus they monitored the tens of thousands of migratory soaring birds that move through this area each autumn. Their final aim is to establish long-term protocolized counts, similar to those of BRC.
In addition to our Turkish colleagues, we also received Watter Albahry from Nature Conservation Egypt who are behind the Galala Raptor Count, the corridor in Egypt where hundreds of thousands of raptors migrate through each spring.
While coming from different countries and backgrounds, each of these visits has one thing in common; to exchange knowledge of raptor migration monitoring. From the history of count sites to methodology, and the identification of raptors. We, the Batumi Raptor Count, aim to assist - newly established - watch sites in the region by making our peer-reviewed methodology available and opening our doors for collaboration.
In the end, knowledge exchange and collaboration is the only way to establish a functional network of watch sites to monitor and conserve the millions of migratory soaring birds using the globally important East African-Eurasian Flyway. Recently, a paper by Jobson et al. (2021) underlined the importance of collaboration: "Workshops run by a coalition of interested organizations and experts at key bottleneck sites could lead to a more sustainable monitoring program in the East African-Eurasian flyway, and consequently to better knowledge of migratory soaring birds".
Does this make you curious about the projects that are going on in the region? Good! Then make sure to keep an eye out on our socials, website, and of course newsletter, as we are working on an East African-Eurasian Flyway page to showcase all the (raptor) migration count sites we have collaborated with!
