Norwich research student reveals how conflict in Ukraine is taking its toll on Greater Spotted Eagles

Charlie Russell - disrupted migration could have consequences for breeding

A NORWICH-based student has written a fascinating paper about the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on the migration of one of Europe's rarest raptors - the Spotted Eagle.

Along with his co-researchers, Charlie Russell, who is a PhD student at the University of Anglia, began the research before the 2022 invasion by Russia.

By monitoring birds tagged in Belarusian Polesia, the aim was to monitor the annual cycle of a species whose European population is numbered at fewer than 1,000 pairs.

Many of these birds breed in  a landscape of wetlands and forests around the River Pripyat, spanning 18 million hectares along the border between southern Belarus and northern Ukraine.

The researchers' preliminary focus was the extent to which long-term population decline was being driven by habitat loss, persecution and hybridisation.

Writes Charlie: "We did not expect to be following these birds as they migrated through a war zone where they faced a new challenge - that of  navigating a complex armed conflict.

"Artillery fire, jets, tanks, and other weaponry increased the potential disturbance encountered while migrating through Ukraine

"There have also been unprecedented numbers of soldiers moving through the landscape and more than 10 million civilians displaced."

                                                            

Greater Spotted Eagle - a species in decline 

For the researchers, carrying out their work at a time when many were losing their lives in terrible circumstances posed ethical as well as logistical questions.

Results from the tracking data from 21 birds was probably predictable.

Charlie's report continues: "Compared to migrations in pre-conflict years, Greater Spotted Eagles flew further, and less directly, to their breeding grounds. Their journeys took longer.

"We also observed a 90 per cent reduction in stopover site-use during this period.

"The birds were not recorded as circumnavigating conflict areas entirely.

"Avoidance behaviour occurred on a more local scale, probably around sporadic and instantaneous events such as artillery fire or shelling when abrupt disturbances can trigger immediate panic or escape responses in wildlife. 

"We believe that individuals exposed to these events may have responded in a variety of ways, deviating their flight path to flee or to seek refuges, thus increasing the distance travelled. 

"Coupled with the decreased use of  stopover sites limiting their ability to recover fitness, these behavioural changes are likely to have increased the energetic costs of migration and the risk of mortality while reducing sub-lethal fitness."

Charlie and his colleagues believe that any decline in the birds' fitness "could carry over into the breeding season, thereby impacting fertility and productivity". 

He notes: "Our tagged eagles mostly migrated through central and western Ukraine where fighting has since subsided. 

"Much of the vital breeding population in Polesia migrate through or breed in eastern Ukraine where intense fighting continues.

"This is on top of how military activity can cause widespread habitat degradation and the erosion of measures put in place to protect wildlife."

"There are also wider questions about  how human conflicts impact wildlife. 

"Reports of the effects on dolphins, bats and the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in this conflict all contribute to evidence of ecocide in war - and it the same will be happening in conflicts across the globe." 

* European Warzone Impacts Raptor Migration is published in the journal, Current Biology.

** Photo of Greater Spotted Eagle by Koshy Koshy via Wikimedia Commons