Great Bustard - Threats and Conservation Status

Threats and Conservation Status

The Great Bustard is classified as Vulnerable at the species level. There are a myriad of threats faced by Great Bustards. Increasing human disturbance and land privatisation is expected to lead to habitat loss caused by the ploughing of grasslands, intensive agriculture, afforestation, increased development of irrigation schemes, and the construction of roads, power lines, fencing and ditches. Mechanisation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, fire and predation by dogs are serious threats for chicks and juveniles, and hunting of adults contributes to high mortality in some of their range countries. Agricultural activity is a major disturbance at nest and, in Hungary, few successful nests are found outside of protected areas.

Two very rare albino Great Bustards from the same nest were killed by electricity cables in Hungary in 2000 and 2003. The bustards, despite their large size, are able to fly at a high velocity and are often mutilated or killed by the cables which are placed in Hungary just at their flying heights. The electricity companies affected will bury only part of the dangerous cables, therefore the authorities are experimenting with fixing fluorescent "Firefly" devices on the most dangerous cables to provide the birds with warning lights. Bustards also occasionally killed by collisions with automobiles or by entanglement in wires.

The Great Bustard was formerly native in Great Britain and a bustard forms part of the design of the Wiltshire Coat of Arms. It was hunted out of existence by the 1840s. In 2004 a project overseeing the reintroduction to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire using eggs taken from Saratov in Russia was undertaken by The Great Bustard Group, a UK Registered Charity that aims to establish a self-sustaining population of Great Bustards in the UK. They have laid eggs and raised chicks in Britain in 2009 and 2010. Although the Great Bustard was once native to Britain, Great Bustards are considered an alien species under English law. The reintroduction of the Great Bustard to the UK by the Great Bustard Group is being carried out in parallel with researchers from the University of Bath that are providing insight into the habitat of native Great Bustard populations in Russia and Hungary. On January 19, 2011 it was announced that the Great Bustard Project had been awarded EU LIFE+ funding, reportedly to the tune of £1.8 million. In Hungary, where the species is the National Bird, Great Bustards are actively protected. The Hungarian authorities are seeking to preserve the long-term future of the population by active protection measures: the area affected by the special ecological treatment had grown to 15 km2 (5.8 sq mi) by the summer of 2006.

Under the auspices of the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), also known as the Bonn Convention, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Conservation and Management of Middle-European Populations of the Great Bustard was concluded and came into effect on June 1, 2001. The MoU provides a framework for governments, scientists, conservation bodies and others to monitor and coordinate conservation efforts in order to protect the middle-European populations of the Great Bustard.