Eastern and Western ornithologists to meet in Yamal

The interest of ornithologists in the Arctic region is defined by the fact that its territory is a breeding ground for several rare waterfowl species such as Tundra Swan, Red-breasted Goose, Forest Bean Goose, and Lesser White-fronted Goose.

The Lesser White-fronted Goose is the rarest goose in Eurasia, and a large part of its western population breeds on the Yamal Peninsula and sees out the winter in Europe and the Middle East. The populations inhabiting the eastern Taimyr, Yakutia and Chukotka migrate to China. We obtained very interesting information in the process of studying the Tundra Swan, another bird listed in the Red Data Book. It emerged that these birds marked on the same day and in the same place on the Yamal Peninsula overwinter in places separated by more than seven thousand kilometers – in Europe and China. With regard to this, scientists have an obvious question of how to protect this species, if the conservation of migratory waterbirds and their habitats is coordinated by different international organizations: The East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) in the Asian part of Russia, the USA, South-East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand and The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) in Europe, Africa, Greenland, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

In my thinking, it is particularly fitting that the scientific conference on Anseriformes will be hosted by the Yamal Peninsula, the heart of the Russian Arctic, where bird species using both migration paths breed. Eastern and Western scientists will meet in Salekhard to compare notes and discuss the coordination of work related to bird species breeding in the Russian Arctic and spending winter in Europe and Asia.

During our four-year monitoring conducted with the assistance of ultralight aviation, we gained some insight into the migration routes, as well as the breeding and moulting grounds of 26 waterfowl species typical of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District.

The studies were conducted under the auspices of the Working Group on Anseriformes of Northern Eurasia. They were entered by an international team of scientists from the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. The project was implemented with the support of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), as well as the YNAO government and the Arktika Interregional Expedition Center.

I hope that neighboring regions will also join the studies, as the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District did in 2015, since the migration routes of Anseriformes breeding in Yamal pass through the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District – Yugra, Republic of Komi, Arkhangelsk Region, and Krasnoyarsk Region. In my opinion, measures for their protection and recruitment should be adjusted for the scientific data obtained everywhere along the flyways of these rare bird species.