Prvi rezultati telemetrijskog praćenja zmijara Circaetus gallicus u Hrvatskoj

Zmijar Circaetus gallicus je gnjezdarica selica Europe koja zimuje u sjevernim tropima Afrike, južno od Sahare. Većina jedinki na migraciji bira glavne selidbene puteve, preko Gibraltara i Sueskog kanala. Kako bi saznali kojim se selidbenim putem služe ptice hrvatske populacije, obilježili smo mladog zmijara GPS uređajem 27.7.2017. u Parku prirode Telašćica. Zmijar je na selidbu krenuo 18.9.2017. i u idućih 25 dana je preletio 6054 kilometara, birajući istočni selidbeni put preko Grčke, Turske, Sirije, Libanona, Jordana, Egipta i Čada, sve do Sudana gdje je zimovao

Stradavanje prvog surog orla Aquila chrysaetos obilježenog satelitskim odašiljačem u Hrvatskoj

Suri je orao gnjezdarica priobalne i gorske Hrvatske. Zbog općenite malobrojne nacionalne populacije i sve većeg pritiska, prije svega vjetroelektrana u Dalmaciji, ova je vrsta ugrožena i potrebno je pratiti sudbine surog orla na razini jedinke. Razvojem satelitske telemetrije omogućena su praćenja mladih ptica čija je disperzija bila dosad slabo istražena. 29.4.2017. počelo je praćenje prve jedinke surog orla obilježene u Hrvatskoj. GPS-GSM uređajem obilježen je mladi mužjak porijeklom s Promine oporavljen od posljedica prostrjeljivanja koji je pušten u prirodu u Parku prirode Krka. Praćenje orla trajalo je malo više od dva mjeseca kad su uređaj i ostaci ptice pronađeni u blizini vjetroagregata kod Bruške. Gotovo je sigurno stradao od sudara s elisom vjetroagregata. Nakon prvotnog istraživanja većeg područja, većinu vremena suri se orao zadržavao u okolici Gornjih Biljana i Gornjeg Karina. S obzirom na to da se suri orao zadržavao gotovo osam mjeseci na tom područja, smatramo da se radi o teritoriju nedorasle jedinke i upućuje na važnost identifikacije takvih područja za učinkovitu zaštitu surog orla

Land use and Europe’s renewable energy transition: identifying low-conflict areas for wind and solar development

Continued dependence on imported fossil fuels is rapidly becoming unsustainable in the face of the twin challenges of global climate change and energy security demands in Europe. Here we present scenarios in line with REPowerEU package to identify Renewables Acceleration Areas that support rapid renewable expansion, while ensuring minimal harm to places important for biodiversity and rural communities. We calculated the area needed to meet renewable energy objectives under Business-as-Usual (BAU) and Low-conflict (LCON) development scenarios within each country, providing a broad overview of the potential for renewable energy generation to reduce impacts when development is steered toward lower conflict lands. Our analysis shows that meeting renewable energy objectives would require a network of land-based wind turbines and solar arrays encompassing upwards of 164,789 km2 by 2030 and 445,654 km2 by 2050, the latter roughly equivalent to the land area of Sweden. Our results highlight that BAU development patterns disproportionately target high-conflict land cover types. By 2030, depending on the development pathway, solar and wind development are projected to impact approximately 4,386–20,996 km2 and 65,735–138,454 km2 of natural and agricultural lands, respectively. As renewable energy objectives increase from 2030 to 2050 impacts to natural and agricultural lands also increase, with upwards of 33,911 km2 from future solar development and 399,879 km2 from wind development. Despite this large footprint, low-conflict lands can generate substantial renewable energy: 6.6 million GWh of solar and 3.5 million GWh of wind, 8–31 times 2030 solar objectives and 3–5 times 2030 wind objectives. Given these patterns, we emphasize the need for careful planning in areas with greater impact potential, either due to a larger demand for land area or limited land availability. Top-emitting countries with large renewable energy objectives (Germany, Italy, Poland, France, Spain) and those with limited flexibility in meeting objectives on low-conflict land (Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Finland, Greece, Portugal, and Norway) should be priorities for country-level customizations to guide low-conflict siting and avoid disproportionate impacts on high-value areas

The EuroBirdPortal: current state of the project and its outputs

The EuroBirdPortal (EBP) project combines the data collected by the different online bird portals oper- ating in Europe. These portals aim mainly to obtain year-round data from the relatively unstructured but intensive and widespread activities of birdwatchers, collecting vast amounts of data that offer great potential to better understand the temporal and spatial distribution of birds. All in all, the portals contrib- uting to the EBP have collected more than 445 million bird records since 2010. In 2020 alone, 56 million bird records were collected and the annual figure keeps increasing by c. 14% year after year. Data is also increasing qualitatively. Currently, 34% of the whole EBP comes from complete or fixed lists and, overall, the submission of lists is increasing by c. 13% each year. On the other hand, more and more portals collect standard monitoring data (e.g. breeding bird surveys) or use specific data collection pro- tocols (e.g. nocturnal flight calls) and submit such data to the EBP correctly identified and characterized making full use of the capabilities of the EBP data standard. The availability of the data collected in near real-time is one of the main added values of the EBP project. Currently, 17 out of the 20 online systems, accounting for 99.5% of all the data collected, submit data to the EBP automatically, on a daily basis and updated up to the previous day. The EBP provides information on the patterns of bird distribution (historic and real-time) for a selection of 137 bird species through the EBP viewer (www.eurobirdpor- tal.org). Moreover, by combining its data with other continent-wide datasets (e.g. bird ringing data from EURING) the EBP is giving further applied value to the data collected by the online bird portals in such important areas as the surveillance of avian-borne diseases

DataSheet1_Land use and Europe’s renewable energy transition: identifying low-conflict areas for wind and solar development.xlsx

Continued dependence on imported fossil fuels is rapidly becoming unsustainable in the face of the twin challenges of global climate change and energy security demands in Europe. Here we present scenarios in line with REPowerEU package to identify Renewables Acceleration Areas that support rapid renewable expansion, while ensuring minimal harm to places important for biodiversity and rural communities. We calculated the area needed to meet renewable energy objectives under Business-as-Usual (BAU) and Low-conflict (LCON) development scenarios within each country, providing a broad overview of the potential for renewable energy generation to reduce impacts when development is steered toward lower conflict lands. Our analysis shows that meeting renewable energy objectives would require a network of land-based wind turbines and solar arrays encompassing upwards of 164,789 km2 by 2030 and 445,654 km2 by 2050, the latter roughly equivalent to the land area of Sweden. Our results highlight that BAU development patterns disproportionately target high-conflict land cover types. By 2030, depending on the development pathway, solar and wind development are projected to impact approximately 4,386–20,996 km2 and 65,735–138,454 km2 of natural and agricultural lands, respectively. As renewable energy objectives increase from 2030 to 2050 impacts to natural and agricultural lands also increase, with upwards of 33,911 km2 from future solar development and 399,879 km2 from wind development. Despite this large footprint, low-conflict lands can generate substantial renewable energy: 6.6 million GWh of solar and 3.5 million GWh of wind, 8–31 times 2030 solar objectives and 3–5 times 2030 wind objectives. Given these patterns, we emphasize the need for careful planning in areas with greater impact potential, either due to a larger demand for land area or limited land availability. Top-emitting countries with large renewable energy objectives (Germany, Italy, Poland, France, Spain) and those with limited flexibility in meeting objectives on low-conflict land (Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Finland, Greece, Portugal, and Norway) should be priorities for country-level customizations to guide low-conflict siting and avoid disproportionate impacts on high-value areas.</p