Greater spotted eagles are already a species under threat. Now, scientists have found that they have been facing yet another danger: the war in Ukraine.Eagles have been exposed to conflict events while migrating through Ukraine, forcing them to deviate from their usual flight path, according to a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology.Listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, greater spotted eagles have been largely eradicated from western and central Europe, according to the study.However, Polesia, a large wetland region that borders Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, remains a stronghold for the species.On March 1, 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, the first of 21 tagged greater spotted eagles crossed into Ukraine on its usual migration, according to researchers from the UK and Estonia.“When the conflict started in February 2022, we were kind of watching things unfold on the news like everyone else, but sitting there also with the feeling that we know our birds are about to pass through that area and wondering what that might mean for them,” lead study author Charlie Russell, a conservation scientist and ornithologist who is studying for his PhD at the UK’s University of East Anglia, told CNN Tuesday.Using conflict data and GPS tracking, the researchers quantified the impact of the conflict on the migratory behaviour of 19 eagles who were passing though Ukraine northward to breeding grounds in southern Belarus between March and April 2022.The study authors found that the eagles diverted significantly from their usual flight path when compared to pre-conflict migrations between 2019 and 2021, with the eagles flying further and less direct …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnGreater spotted eagles are already a species under threat. Now, scientists have found that they have been facing yet another danger: the war in Ukraine.Eagles have been exposed to conflict events while migrating through Ukraine, forcing them to deviate from their usual flight path, according to a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology.Listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, greater spotted eagles have been largely eradicated from western and central Europe, according to the study.However, Polesia, a large wetland region that borders Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, remains a stronghold for the species.On March 1, 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, the first of 21 tagged greater spotted eagles crossed into Ukraine on its usual migration, according to researchers from the UK and Estonia.“When the conflict started in February 2022, we were kind of watching things unfold on the news like everyone else, but sitting there also with the feeling that we know our birds are about to pass through that area and wondering what that might mean for them,” lead study author Charlie Russell, a conservation scientist and ornithologist who is studying for his PhD at the UK’s University of East Anglia, told CNN Tuesday.Using conflict data and GPS tracking, the researchers quantified the impact of the conflict on the migratory behaviour of 19 eagles who were passing though Ukraine northward to breeding grounds in southern Belarus between March and April 2022.The study authors found that the eagles diverted significantly from their usual flight path when compared to pre-conflict migrations between 2019 and 2021, with the eagles flying further and less direct …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
