Welcome to the Bewick’s Swan Project in the Federal Programme for Biological Diversity!
Around half of the Northwest European Bewick’s Swans winter in the lowlands and large river valleys of the North German Plain each year. They are traditionally found in wet grasslands, where they can meet their energy needs for the cold winter months and for their migration to the Arctic breeding grounds. At night, they rest on nearby bodies of water, protected from predators. However, the population has been declining for years. Therefore, in November 2020, NABU launched the six-year funded project “Bewick’s Swan: Conservation concept for an endangered migratory bird species in Germany”.
The aim of the project is to find out the reasons for this decline:
- Do Bewick’s swans find enough suitable feeding areas here?
- How do Bewick’s swans utilize the food supply?
- How should sleeping and feeding areas be interconnected?
- To what extent are illegal hunting, power lines, and wind turbines a threat?
These and other questions will be investigated in the coming years.
The project is funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.