It has been an audacious flight, monitored and protected by the Internet. Slovakia’s Lesser Spotted Eagle risked extinction until the Slovak Ministry of Environment and the Tatra National Park launched an ambitious preservation project. Under the seven year old program, young eagles are fitted with transmitters and systematically monitored. This year, we partnered with the Ministry and the National park, offering Google Earth to track an eagle named "Arnold" in an attempt to keep him safe on his its migration route to South Africa.
So far, four million views have been recorded tracking Arnold’s path south into Africa. National television broadcasts weekly updates headlined “Follow the Slovak Eagle.” Earlier this month, the bird vanished near the Kundelungu National Park in Congo. Arnold’s followers became increasingly worried that something bad had happened to him. But after 14 days of silence, Arnold’s transmitter signal reappeared this week from Zambia.
In less than a decade, the preservation project has managed to save 15 Lesser Spotted Eagles and stabilize their total population in Slovakia. Baby eaglets are collected from nests, carefully picked out in advance, when they are approximately five days old, in order to prevent their murder by parents. They then temporarily placed in a Rescue Station where a foster mother takes care of them and feeds them. When the young birds can feed by themselves and regulate their body temperature, they are released into the wild.
Now, thanks to the Internet, they can continue to be followed and protected. The Tatra National Park plans to reach out to other national park administrations in the European Union to speak about their lessons learned and promote the use of the internet in forestry
Posted by Ondrej Socuvka, Policy Manager Google Slovakia
No comments :
Post a Comment
You are welcome to comment here, but your remarks should be relevant to the conversation. To keep the exchanges focused and engaging, we reserve the right to remove off-topic comments, or self-promoting URLs and vacuous messages