New Flyway Campaign to Highlight Plight of the Swans

Bonn, 16 March 2016 – A ground-breaking awareness-raising campaign spanning the entire migration route of the Bewick’s Swan from its breeding grounds in Arctic Russia to its wintering areas in north-west Europe, will likely be making headlines this autumn.

The expedition coined Flight of the Swans being led by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in cooperation with a number of international partners, will be taking paramotorist Sacha Dench across 11 countries along the migration route of the Bewick’s Swan (Cygnus columbianus bewickii) starting in September 2016. 

The north-west European population of the Bewick’s Swan has declined by 40 per cent since the mid-1990s due to many different factors such as impacts of climate change, changing land-use, illegal and accidental shooting as well as lead poisoning across the range of the bird’s migration.

The expedition will help to raise awareness for the plight of the Bewick’s Swan and will try to stimulate support for its conservation among a wide audience, including local people, hunters, farmers, conservation organizations, authorities, decision-makers and the wider public.

Flight of the Swans is not only likely to be a ground-breaking expedition revealing the extraordinary journey of one of AEWA’s iconic species, it will also be an excellent example of a flyway-scale awareness raising campaign, which will help to stimulate conservation action and international cooperation for the Bewick Swan,” said Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of AEWA. “If successful, it will also be beneficial to many other AEWA species and may even become a model for similar future initiatives across the African-Eurasian Flyway” added Trouvilliez.

In 2012, AEWA adopted the International Single Species Action Plan for the Bewick's Swan which aims to reverse the decline of the North-west European population of Bewick’s Swan and bring the species back to a favourable conservation status.

As one of the international partners of the campaign alongside the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and Wetlands International, the UNEP/AEWA Secretariat will help raise awareness of the expedition and the work being carried out to implement the Species Action Plan through its international networks.

The Secretariat will also be encouraging AEWA National Focal Points within the range countries of the Bewick’s Swan to use some of the national conservation workshops being planned in the context of the campaign to highlight their current and future conservation activities for the species.

“We are delighted to be part of this exciting international awareness raising campaign. We hope it will generate a wide interest in and conservation actions for Bewick’s Swans and other AEWA species,” said Trouvilliez.

More detailed information on the expedition can be found in the Flight of the Swans manual or on the WWT website.

You can also follow Sacha on her expedition on Facebook and Twitter.

Last updated on 07 September 2016

Type: 
News item
Region: 
Asia
Europe
Species: 
Cygnus columbianus
Species group: 
Birds