Behavioural ecology and conservation of two sympatric raptors in North-Central Kazakhstan: the Pallid harrier (Circus macrourus) and the Montagu’s harrier (Circus pygargus).
The Pallid harrier is a rare and poorly understood migratory raptor that breeds across Eastern Europe and northern Asia. In winter, most Pallid harriers move to the Afrotropics and the Indian subcontinent.
Substantial declines have been reported in many areas of the species' breeding range (Davygora & Belik, 1994), and the Pallid harrier is now classified as Near-threatened globally (Birdlife International, 2000) and in certain countries is of even greater conservation concern. In spite of this situation, the species remains poorly studied.
Wetlands and other moist areas amidst grassland of steppe and forest-steppe are the typical breeding habitat of the Pallid harrier (Birdlife International, 2003), where they are thought to search for areas with high densities of small mammals in early spring, but we don’t know to what extent the distribution, breeding density and breeding success of this species is dependent on rodent abundance.
This project will evaluate the behavioral ecology and conservation of Pallid harriers in Kazakhstan, its core breeding range. Indeed, there is an urgent need to understand the links between diet specialization, foraging and breeding habitat selection, local density dependence and breeding success in this species.
As the breeding habitats of this species have deteriorated due to wide-scale transformation of steppe grasslands to agriculture this work will have implications for the conservation of this species, and will benefit steppe biodiversity at a larger scale.
Land-use transformations also have affected the wintering ground of this species and it is known that the loss of high-quality wintering areas can influence breeding success during the following season (Norris et al. 2004). This project will identify the links between breeding and wintering populations and determine if the population dynamics of this species is affected by winter conditions.
In contrast to the Pallid Harriers, the behavioural ecology and population dynamics of Montagu’s harriers is relatively well known. However, knowledge about the species is for the moment based on the well-studied western European populations breeding in agricultural areas (review in Arroyo et al. 2004). The study of Asian populations breeding in natural habitats and comprising the bulk of the population in Eurasia may improve our understanding of the sustainability of Montagu’s harrier populations in agricultural areas at a larger scale, and through comparative studies will help us to understand the ecological constraints of the Pallid harrier.
The project will take place in association with the North Kazakhstan Field Station near the Naurzum Natural Reserve, north-central Kazakhstan. The field station is an initiative supported by the National Aviary and the Wildlife Conservation Society, both in the USA. Pilot work in north Kazakhstan in 2000 showed this area to contain a high density of breeding harriers breeding. This project is one of the first international research projects to take place in the Field Station since its creation in 2006.
Click here to see movements of a pallid harrier from Kazakhstan that we have been tracking via satellite!
 |
 |
Click on logos to visit their home pages |
Contact information
Beatriz Arroyo and Julien Terraube
Instituto de Recursos Cinegeticas, Ronda de Toledo S/N, 13005 Ciudad Réal, Spain.
Email : bea@ceh.ac.uk; jterraube@hotmail.com
Todd Katzner
National Aviary, Allegheny Commons West, Pittsburgh, PA 15212-5248, USA
Email: todd.katzner@aviary.org
|
