From the Sky: a new film about Georgia's migrating raptors

Fauna & Flora has released From the Sky, a new short documentary about the raptor poaching crisis in Georgia and the people working to change it. The film follows local conservationist Gizo Seskuria through the Batumi bottleneck and into the communities that share this landscape with the autumn migration.

The film turns its attention to a group whose role may surprise viewers: Georgian falconers working to end poaching. Their involvement shows how local knowledge and traditions can become part of protecting birds, while keeping falconry safe and sustainable.

Fauna & Flora and BRC work in the same globally important migration bottleneck, the Batumi bottleneck, where both organisations combine conservation, education and community engagement to help protect migrating raptors. Many scenes in From the Sky were filmed at BRC’s count stations, making the landscape, its conservation issues — and the birds passing through it — especially familiar to us. We believe it is important to share the wider conservation work taking place across the region, and this documentary offers a powerful look at some of the people working to make the flyway safer.

From BRC: For readers interested in more context, the earlier documentary, Worlds Collide, explores how migrating birds, falconers and conservationists meet in the Batumi bottleneck.

Fauna & Flora made the film with Georgian colleagues and young falconers supported by its raptor conservation programme in western Georgia. It is available in English and Georgian, with the aim of reaching local hunting communities, the wider Georgian public and international audiences who may be discovering the importance of this flyway for the first time.