New program board
The BRC has a new program board, now functioning within Bird Conservation Georgia. We welcome Folkert De Boer and Siranush Tumanyan as new members, and a few leave us. The former long time board member and founder, Brecht Verhelst, has left and shifted to the position as Director of Bird Conservation Georgia. There he is still in a strong function to support the BRC program with necessary needs, apart from other projects he coordinates. We'll miss Wouter Vansteelant, who has been actively working as board member for several years and decided to take a step back.
The main tasks for the new program board is to set sail for sustainable waters where the BRC can remain over the long term. Our core projects autumn monitoring, student exchange, ecotourism and research have been set up from the scratch and proven important for the protection of raptors. We now bring their sustainability into the focus of our efforts while additional, smaller extensions can be supportive and necessary to maintain the program.
With kind regards,
the program board of BRC
Jasper Wehrmann (Chairman)
Johannes Jansen (Vice-chairman)
Siranush Tumanyan
Folkert de Boer
Order the BRC new year cards
Wish your friends and family merry migration and a happy new year with the new BRC postcards!
One pack contains 5 different postcards and 5 envelopes, and costs €10, delivery included. All you have to do to get them, is to mail your address to filiep.tjollyn@batumiraptorcount.org and we will get back to you with payment instructions.
Order the set of the cards today and support our raptor conservation mission!
Cards designed by Rafa Benjumea - Ecotono Birding Sevilla.
End of BRC autumn count 2013
BRC's monitoring of migrating raptors autumn 2013 is over! Yesterday, the 16th of October, was the final day of our monitoring program. In total, from both count stations together 1.229.199 raptors were counted this fall. This might be a new season record, although the data is not filtered yet on double counts.
After the strong flight in the first days of October, that made the count surpass the million, migration slowed down. The volunteers were treated with more slow paced migration, and had plenty of time to enjoy the different eagles. Especially the Imperial eagles migrated quite late this year. Strikingly, Steppe Buzzards waited for the last day to outnumber Honey Buzzards. This year we counted 445.084 of them. And as it was a last day present, a Golden Eagle flew over station two. An detailed season overview will follow soon.
A big word of thanks should go to all people that contributed to this count. All this would not have been possible without the many volunteers that engaged themselves to work long days at the count stations. Especially to our three count coordinators Simon Cavailles, Clement Rollant and Rafael Benjumea. Respect for their day to day motivation, keeping up a high quality count the full two months! Special thanks to Amelie Armand, Daniel Towers, Florian Jacobs and Romain Riols, who assisted us during almost the entire season and were the backbone of our count team. Of course, a project like this stands out due to its meticulous preparation. Many thanks to Arthur Green, who was instrumental in setting up the monitoring, tuned the protocol and did a tremendous job selecting and communicating with the count volunteer team. Thanks to Dries Engelen, who took care of the practical preparation as an intern and his help during the first days of the count. And of course, big thanks to all others who volunteered in the count: Iva Sostaric, Bilgecan Şen, Pelin Yalçınoğlu, Matthias Lehmann, Claire Stavaux, Filip Collet, Wouter van Pelt, Rasmus Elleby, Zackarias Svensson, Albert de Jong, Simon Vyncke, Paul French, Aki Aintila, Dieter Coelembier, Kalle Meller, Jan Ranson, Csaba Tölgyesi, Marius Karlonas, Fabian Binard, Filiep T'jollyn, Jeroen Bossens, Olivier Dochy, Rien van Wijk, David Herman, Vladislav Rudovskiy, Johannes Silvonen, Birgen Haest, Jo Bouwmeester and Irene Jiménez.
We much appreciated all the work of the host families where we were accommodated, thank you Ruslan, Nuri, Etheri, Merabi and all other family members. They have supported our count logistically in many ways, and were invaluable for our success.
And many thanks to all sponsors and grants who have made this season possible!
Hope to see you next year!