Conservation of Europe's Rarest Continental Passerine: A Transboundary Initiative for Aquatic Warbler Population Recovery

ongoing

The project „Conservation of Europe's Rarest Continental Passerine: A Transboundary Initiative for Aquatic Warbler Population Recovery“ (acronym: LIFE4AquaticWarbler) aims at halting the ongoing range contraction of Europe´s rarest passerine bird - the Aquatic Warbler (Acrocephalus paludicola) - species protected by the EU Birds Directive. The project area encompasses the mayor part of the breeding range of the species, which is at present left with less than 50 breeding populations globally. The aim of the project is to stop the declining trend of the subpopulations in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Ukraine and to restore the Aquatic warbler’s breeding range to an area larger than 1,500 km² by facilitating the re-occupation of at least 6 abandoned breeding sites. To reach this ambitious goal, the project will restore 3,910 ha of breeding habitat and translocate 760 birds from donor populations in Poland and Ukraine to recipient sites in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary. During the last 30 years, the international Aquatic Warbler Conservation Team (AWCT) has successfully improved and restored many deteriorated breeding habitats of the species in many countries. The translocation strategy of the project is a logical next step for bringing back the species to these habitats across its former breeding range. A particularity of this project is the intensive cooperation of the project partners from four EU member states with an NGO from the accession candidate state Ukraine - The Baltic Environmental Forum (Lithuania), EuroNatur, Förderverein Naturschutz im Peenetal e.V., Landschaftspflegeverband Uckermark-Schorfheide (all from Germany), Ogólnopolskie Towarzystwo Ochrony Ptaków (Poland), Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds (Ukraine) and Hortobágy Természetvédelmi Egyesület (Hungary). The project foresees cooperation in the fields of nature protection, rural economy and EU legislation. It is planned to last for nine years.