Project "Flying over Natura 2000"

Apart from WWF-Belgium the main organisers of the project are Czech Radio (for Central and Eastern Europe) and Solon, Belgium (for Western Europe). The project is financed by European Commission funds on the basis of grant No 07.040200.00/2004/393583/SUB/B2. 

The goal of the project is to acquaint the public with the system "Natura 2000", which is being established in the European Union to protect various types of natural habitats, i.e. habitats with the highest number of rare and endangered plant and animal species. The "guides" of the "Natura 2000" system are black storks equipped with satellite transmitters ("backpacks" well known from the projects "African" and "New Odyssey"). The transmitters allow us to follow migration of the marked storks to their African wintering grounds and to record which of the areas of "Natura 2000" they fly over or use for resting. Numbers of European TV stations are going to transmit short "postcards" from these places.

Eight European countries are involved in the project - Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Spain. Two or three storks with "backpacks" fly out of each country. It will be very interesting to follow the Baltic storks because of almost no information available about their migration paths. But we are most certainly going to experience many surprising moments with the Central and Eastern European storks as well.