Saving the great bustard

Forest and Bird, Issue 267, 1 February 1993, Page 6

Saving the great bustard

THE GREAT bustard is probably Europe’s most spectacular bird. It is also globally threatened. Its last stronghold is the Spanish steppes, where over 65 percent of the world population of 20,000 occur. But the Spanish government is planning to use European Community funds to irrigate four million hectares of the steppes by 2010, and the survival of the great bustard is seriously threatened. Rolling, open and dry areas of low scrub and grassland, the Spanish steppes are a beautiful and rapidly diminishing habitat with a unique and threatened bird life including two other globally threatened birds, the little bustard and lesser kestrel, and other rare or declining species. Irrigation effectively destroys the habitat for steppe birds. The all-important mosaic of semi-natural vegetation, extensive crops and fallow land is replaced with monocultures of artificially fertilised, dense and fast-growing crops. Increased pesticide use reduces the invertebrate food supply for birds like the lesser kestrel and bustards. Disturbance from agricultural operations such as aerial spraying prevents shy species such as the great bustard from nesting. Great bustards, being large and cumbersome in flight, also die through collisions with the power lines essential for the schemes. The planned irrigation schemes make little sense and are overwhelmingly opposed by local farmers. The steppes are essentially dry places, and the water tables are not suitable for extensive exploitation. The schemes are almost certainly unsustainable in the long term. The ICBP backed by ornithological societies throughout Europe, 1s calling on the European Community to stop financing the irrigation projects. Supporters of the great bustard have won an initial victory with the declaration of two Environmentally Sensitive

Areas in the steppes. Farmers in these areas, which contain about 1,500 bustards, will receive subsidies from the Community to maintain the steppes as a.traditional patchwork of grazing land and lowintensity cereal farming. However, the threat of irrigation over large areas of the steppes remains. Source: International Council for Bird Preservation