Extinct Chernobyl eagle back from the dead

We're ending the week with some good news.

Extinct Chernobyl eagle back from the dead - British Trust for Ornithology

Large brown eagle, photographed from above, sitting on a nest in the fork of a tree — Greater Spotted Eagle at the nest by Valery Dombrovski

Rare Greater Spotted Eagles have returned to the Chernobyl area after going extinct before the accident.

Scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) have been working with scientists in Belarus to help assess how wildlife is doing in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), and it seems that some species are doing very well.

Before the accident, Greater Spotted Eagles were locally extinct but with the absence of human interference and the natural rewetting of a large proportion of the CEZ, the eagle is thriving. Endangered in Europe, Greater Spotted Eagles are an indicator of wetland habitat quality and at the last count, up to thirteen pairs were breeding in the CEZ.

The Greater Spotted Eagle isn’t alone: White-tailed Eagles, also locally extinct before the accident, have also returned and are once again breeding in the area. Unlike Greater Spotted Eagles, which migrate south during winter, White-tailed Eagles are resident, and their survival during winter in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is likely helped by the carrion that wolves supply. As hunting is illegal in the “zone”, wolves, and other large-mammals have rebounded to abundant levels. These complex interactions between species signify the ecological recovery that is happening there without human pressures.

Dr Adham Ashton-Butt, lead BTO scientist on the project, said, “Our work shows that rewilding could be a valuable method to conserve threatened species and restore ecosystems.” He added, “Rewilding, or restoration with reduced management, is becoming an increasingly employed method to deal with the global biodiversity and climate change crisis. However, long-term data on the impact of rewilding on wildlife communities are scarce or non-existent. Our dataset offers a rare exception, allowing us to show the effects on birds of prey of over thirty years of land-abandonment of previously intensively farmed area.”

More information here and the paper - Long-term Effects of Rewilding on Species Composition: 22-years of Raptor Monitoring in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has just been published in the journal Restoration Ecology.