Medium and high voltage power lines in their habitats pose a particular danger to bustards, and every year a few specimens fall victim to collisions with the lines. Between July and early October 2023, 5 bustards fell victim to the Montág meadow in Csongrád-Csanád county, which is a significant part of the 25 specimens living there.
Medium and high voltage power lines in their habitats pose a particular danger to bustards, and every year a few animals die as a result of collisions with the power lines. Between July and early October 2023, 5 bustards died in the Montág meadow in Csongrád-Csanád county, a significant part of the 25 animals living there.
The bustard is a species of Eurasian grasslands, the emblematic bird of the Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Association. It is a large bird, the weight of the roosters can reach up to 16 kg.
The bird species is endangered all over the world, it is also highly protected in our country, its value in money is 1,000,000 HUF. The domestic population is only 1,480-1,680 specimens.
The survival of bustards is threatened by many factors, including increasingly mechanized agriculture, habitat loss, nest destruction by fur-bearing predators, and collisions with overhead power lines.
Every year, it happens that a bustard collides with a power line, but what happened in our county in recent months has never been seen before: 5 (!) bustards died as a result of a collision with a high-voltage power line in the Montág meadow in Csongrád-Csanád county, where only 25 individuals live.
The last collision, which occurred in the first days of October, was accidentally photographed by László Engi, a volunteer from the local MME group, which may have never happened before in our country!
Nature conservation has been able to manage medium-voltage power lines in critical areas, but replacing 120,000-volt lines with underground cables is almost unaffordable; only a few countries have been able to afford this so far, and even then only in certain sections.
Increasing the visibility of power lines and limiting the use of agricultural machinery with reflectors at night may be a good solution in the endangered area, where the local population of bustards has been halved in the past 30 years.
Dr. Bela Tokody
Source:
https://mme.hu/
