Every spring for the last 10 years WWF and
its partners are doing bird monitoring along the Mura, Drava and Danube River.
This year is the first that we can report an increase
of the bird populations and we are very happy to report that the biggest population
of sand martins (Riparia riparia) has been identified on
one location on the Drava River (Libanovec, close to Koprivnica). All together we
counted 800 pairs of sand martin, 15 pairs of bee-eater (Merops apiaster) and 1 pair of kingfisher (Alcedines).
The increase of populations came because
last year’s floods destroyed some of the water infrastructure along the Drava River
that enabled the side bank erosion and formation of steep banks. This resulted
in creation of bigger habitat for sand martin that lives on river steep banks.
In general, number of birds along the Mura,
Drava and Danube River is decreasing. The situation on the Drava River is most
difficult and out of 11 species identified only one species, bee-eater, is slowly
increasing in numbers, while all other species are in big downwards spiral.
Number of pairs of sand martin on the Drava
River banks decreased from 12.232 in
2005 to 3.999 pairs in 2015. However, this year could bring an upwards trend
and we hope that the conditions will not change and that the populations will
continue to increase.
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