The origin of Raptors Conservation Action date back to mid-2016, while the team members’ voluntary efforts in a bird ringing camp.
According to personal observations of expert wildlife vet Onur Okur during his academic study, the number of injured raptor cases passed over a hundred individuals per year. Very diverse species like Long-legged Buzzard (Buteo rufinus), Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo), Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), Imperial Eagle (Aquila heliaca), Black Vulture (Aegypius monachus), Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus), Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) and Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) that were injured mostly because of the human activities were treating in the clinic.
In the base of this knowledge, the team had developed Raptors Conservation Action with the support of Rufford Small Grants in early 2017 to investigate the origins of the raptor injury cases and to determine and minimize the threats towards the raptors in Ankara, Eskişehir and Bolu provinces. While doing that, the project conducted awareness-raising activities in local communities including the children and young people and monitored the datas that is provided by fieldworks and clinic records to update the conservation priorities to sustain the project’s conservation goals.
In the 15 months of the project, the team spent 27 days in the fieldwork and visited more than 120 villages and towns in the project area. 17 bird watching activities had been organized with participation of 320 students. 94 raptors had been treated in the clinic, while 34 of them were released back after rehabilitation and 13 of them became amputees. As an outcome, the project finds out that the firearms and car hits are the two major threats against the raptors in the project area. Long-legged Buzzard (Buteo rufinus), Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) and Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) were the top three species that were common victims of these threats.
