Background

Justification

Great Bustards were formerly very much part of British wildlife before they were finally hunted out of existence in Britain by the 1840s. They have suffered similar dramatic declines in numbers across their range in the last 200 years and their global population is now estimated to be just 35,000 individuals. They are currently listed as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List of Globally Threatened Species.

They are a missing piece of UK wildlife heritage, artificially removed from the our ecosystem due to over zealous trophy hunters. There still remains plenty of habitat suitable for Great Bustards in the UK, in particular the rolling downland and arable fields of Wessex. However, their population decline and fragmentation means recolonisation is unlikely to occur without a reintroduction programme.

A mounted man and two dogs (left) give chase to a running Bustard (right) in the

background of this illustration dated 1797. The Bustard’s reluctance

to fly and ability to run incredibly fast made coursing with greyhounds

a popular form of hunting them.

The UK is obliged under EU legislation (Habitats Directive 1992) to reintroduce species where it is considered feasible. The GBG was set up in 1998 to explore the possibility of reintroducing the Great Bustard to the UK and commissioned a feasibility study accordingly. The study took several years to compile and investigated all academic and practical research on Great Bustards and reintroductions in general. It ably demonstrated that the UK offers suitable conditions for Great Bustards and that the project would not be detrimental to the donor population or the existing UK ecosystem.

Based on the feasibility study, in 2003, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued a 10-year trial-licence to release Great Bustards in the UK.

Where the birds come from

Great Bustards for the UK reintroduction come from the population in the Russian Federation. This is the second largest population in the world, estimated at 8,000 individuals, and is considered stable by BirdLife International. This population is centred in the Trans-Volga region of southern Russia, principally the Oblast (administrative region) of Saratov.

Much of the natural steppe grassland of Saratov has been converted to huge cereal fields which now seem to provide more attractive conditions for Great Bustards to nest in even when areas of natural and semi-natural steppe are available. The extreme seasons experienced in Saratov results in the cultivation of fields coinciding with the Great Bustard nesting period. Despite their size, female Great Bustards are difficult to spot on a nest and reluctant to fly away from approaching tractors and consequently countless nests are inadvertently destroyed by the teams of tractors working the fields.

Since the 1980s The A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution (a branch of the Russian National Academy of Science) have been collecting eggs from doomed nests and artificially incubating them. Chicks from this scheme were originally used in various captive breeding projects across the former Soviet Union which has so far proved unsuccessful. The Institute is now running a captive rear and release project instead, bypassing the apparent pitfalls of captive breeding, and releasing Great Bustards back into the wild in Russia and also providing the chicks for the UK reintroduction.

A positive impact

The GBG is working together with the A.N. Severtsov Institute to conserve the Great Bustard population in Saratov. In 2006 the GBG officially began a nest protection scheme to conserve Great Bustard nests in fields through the creation of ‘buffer zones’ – areas left uncultivated by tractors by driving around nesting females.

Although straight forward in theory, successful implementation of buffer zones has proved difficult due to the extremely cryptic nature of nesting females and the sheer size of fields in Saratov, which average 4 km2! It is impossible to find all nesting females in advance and alert tractor drivers to the location of nests. Instead nests are only discovered as tractors systematically drive the fields, flushing females from nests only when the tractors are almost on top of them. This results in buffer zones that are often too small and that have nests near the edge rather than the centre, making them highly susceptible to desertion and predation.

Female Great Bustard on nest situated in an uncultivated ‘buffer zone’.

Such nests are highly conspicuous and quickly result in desertion and

predation, especially where the nest is close to the edge rather than in

the centre, as pictured here.

However, the scheme has been successful in raising awareness of the global importance of the Russian population of Great Bustards and the urgent need for practical conservation measures from the Federal level to the tractor drivers. With the nest protection scheme in place and other conservation measures undertaken and funded by or through the GBG, together with the release of birds back into the wild, the overall impact on the Russian population is positive. The scheme is closely monitored by the Russian Federal Services and also has the endorsement of MME, the Hungarian BirdLife International Partner who were invited to inspect the process.