As life for an amusingly named fowl species turns into tougher, Spanish scientists have proposed new measures to revive its fortunes.
Suitable habitats for the little bustard (Tetrax tetrax) are shrinking attributable to a discount in steppe-land and the disappearance of conventional agriculture and livestock farming, based on a brand new research within the journal Biological Conservation.
The researchers behind the research say growing the world of fallow lands – unsown farmland – is essential to stabilising essentially the most threatened populations.
“This strategy has a positive impact on the little bustard, mainly because it increases the reproductive success,” says Santi Mañosa, an avian conservationist on the University of Barcelona, Spain.
“It gives the species with every part that has disappeared within the rain-fed agricultural environments due to the intensification of agricultural practices.
“In spring they find food, places for the males to stop and attract females, mate, nest and feed the baby birds. In summer and autumn, and a great part of the winter, when crops are reaped and cultivated, fallow lands are the only places with enough plants to provide the little bustard flocks shelter and food.”
Fallow lands have gotten much less frequent in Spain, which has led to the little bustard being listed as ‘near threatened’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
“Between 2009 and 2018, 21% of the fallow land surface has been lost in Catalonia, and steppe-land bird populations have reduced by 27% between 2002 and 2019, mainly due the loss of fallow lands,” says co-author Gerard Bota, from the Forest Science and Technology Center of Catalonia.
But whereas inhabitants fashions generated on this research counsel that growing the world of fallow lands may halt the decline of the species, it will not be sufficient to get better inhabitants numbers.
Instead, implementing different conservation measures to cut back mortality from each pure and human causes, which have to date been uncared for by little bustard conservation applications, will likely be important.
“For instance, reducing the mortality of adult females. We know the little bustard is sensitive to death by collision with power lines because of its relatively reduced frontal vision when flying,” Bota says.
“It would be necessary to identify the main areas of post-breeding and winter aggregation and to act on the power lines installed to reduce the probability of death of the specimens. In the most important breeding and hibernation areas, some lines should be buried or eliminated, and in the rest of the areas, the lines should be properly marked with anti-collision elements.”
