Birds without borders, and within: tales from former eastern bloc republics.
Stating the obvious, Eastern Europe spans the divide between western Europe and Asia, not just geographically but in terms of wildlife and specifically birds. Some Asian species reach the limit of their range in the region, the same applying in reverse to a few western species. However, for one bird, the Aquatic Warbler, the entire global breeding range is located in Eastern Europe. The chances for long-term survival of the species were already in the balance even before the latest invasion of Ukraine by Russia and its fate is entirely dependent on the future endeavours of its cross-border human guardians and the whims of economic forces. Informed by past experience, this article speculates about what the future holds for wildlife, natural habitats and conservation in Eastern Europe.
Several years ago, fellow Birds on the Brink trustee Andrew Cleave and I visited Belarus to see the country for ourselves and to photograph some of its iconic species. By chance our arrival in Minsk coincided with peace negotiations aimed at resolving a previous war in Ukraine: the one that followed Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Donbas region in the east of the country.
It turned out there were some big names in town, and to emphasise the status of the visitors the airport was encircled by military personnel, tanks and armoured vehicles. Despite this slightly intimidating start, traffic on the exit roads was virtually non-existent and our escape from the capital was straightforward.
An Aquatic Warbler and classic marsh habitat for the species in Belarus. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
Our first port of call in Belarus was to wetlands that are home to breeding Aquatic Warblers, Europe’s rarest passerine and one with the dubious honour of being Europe’s only Globally Threatened songbird. Nowadays the breeding population is thought to be confined to just four countries: Belarus, which holds the lion’s share, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. According to BirdLife International the entire world population numbers between 20,000-30,000 birds and is decreasing. The juxtaposition of the species’ breeding range and the current war in Ukraine will set off alarm bells with any ornithologist familiar with the region.
Aquatic Warblers are incredibly habitat-specific and favour wetlands referred to as sedge fen mires; the ground is inundated by few centimetres of standing water and to our untutored eyes the sedge-dominated vegetation of this habitat is rather sparse. Water is key to the survival of Aquatic Warbler habitat: too much or too little and the wetland becomes unsuitable for the species. Although this rather specialist habitat has probably never been widespread, historically it undoubtedly would have been greater in extent in a pre-mechanised era than it is in the 21st Century.
Today the fate of this habitat and the Aquatic Warbler itself are entirely dependent on the actions of man. Destroyed, or drained and thereby degraded, either directly or through water abstraction, it is only by intervention that the species stands a chance of surviving. It is hard to imagine this will be high on the list of priorities for inhabitants of countries that Aquatic Warblers call home in the foreseeable future, no matter how well intentioned the species’ guardians might be.
So we were told, this hi-tech piece of agricultural kit was donated to Belarus for the benefit of Aquatic Warbler habitat management through the generosity of the RSPB and the EU LIFE fund. However, it sat idle and decaying when we visited because it had broken down and spare parts were not available. On top of that, we were told there was no money to actually purchase the required parts or to pay anyone with the skills to fit it them. ©Andrew Cleave/Nature Photographers Ltd
An Aquatic Warbler in full song
One of the benefits for Aquatic Warblers of being so habitat-specific is that they have few other rival species to compete with. They behave more like mice than birds for much of the time, preferring to creep through sedges rather than emerge from cover. That’s except for a brief period which provides a window of opportunity for observation: at the start of the breeding season, males sing from conspicuous perches, but only between around 5.30 and 7.30 pm.
©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
Moving on, we travelled through vast swathes of arable land in southern Belarus. In agricultural terms it is contiguous, and has a lot in common, with farmland in Ukraine which, during the Soviet era, was described as the empire’s breadbasket. This productive role continues to this day, or did until the latest war began, and Ukraine is said to produce 10% of the world’s wheat. But this comes at an environmental cost. Not just for the lack of Carbon sequestration it promotes but perhaps for other unseen reasons too.
Colourfully decorated roadside crosses are a feature of the Belarusian countryside and perhaps serve a dual purpose, one religious the other being as memorials to the fallen wildlife of the country’s intensive arable farmland. ©Andrew Cleave/Nature Photographers Ltd
I can’t speak for conditions in Ukraine but I imagine they are similar to Belarus where the arable farming appeared to be as intensive as anywhere I have seen in the world. Alarmingly, birds of prey were conspicuous by their absence from the endless fields of wheat that we passed. Furthermore, with echoes of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and memories of DDT and Dieldrin in the back our minds, we drove for mile after mile without seeing a single bird of any sort. Assuming this avian absence reflected impoverished biodiversity generally and a lack of food, it is difficult to imagine that such biological sterility could be achieved in any other way than by chemical abuse.
Although we spent just a brief period in Belarus it was hard not to detect authoritarian undertones which translated into a sense of contempt by authorities towards the general population. If what Europeans take to be people’s basic freedoms are not respected, one has to wonder what hope there is for abstinence when it comes to the use of chemicals long-since banned in the west.
Rural life
On the outskirts of rural villages in Belarus, thickets and bramble patches here and there hosted Red-backed Shrikes, harking back to a bucolic past in the UK. Their Belarusian companion species - Barred Warbler, seen here - served as a reminder we were a long way from home. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
By contrast with the intensive agricultural prairies and their wildlife impoverishment, visits to rural Belarusian villages were like stepping back in time, in a good way if natural history is your passion. Horses and carts were modes of transport, small scale subsistence plots fed families, and a varied and slightly shambolic land use that included the production of vegetables and grain ensured food in abundance for everything from White Storks to Tree Sparrows.
A close inspection of rural village life revealed that all was not quite what it seemed. We spoke to a lady whose cottage hosted nesting Azure Tits. Although she looked the part, she said she was a retired librarian and wouldn’t dream of living in her rural dacha in the winter months. It was in essence just a weekend or holiday cottage and she much preferred to return to city life when the Belarusian winter bit. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
The Belarusian town of Turov sits close to the Pripyat River, roughly 50km north of the border with Ukraine and around 120km west of the Palieski State Radioecological Reserve, the region affected by fallout from Chernobyl. In birdwatching terms it is best known for its patron bird, the Terek Sandpiper, which nests sporadically on banks of the river. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
A few years ago Andrew and I visited another former Soviet republic, Latvia. We spent most of our time in the vicinity of the Baltic coastline, which boasts mile after mile of empty beaches and pristine conifer forests colonising the dunes and stretching inland in great tracts. Was it conservation that had preserved these habitats we wondered? Probably not we discovered after talking to the Latvian family with whom we were staying. The land was criss-crossed by two-tank-wide die-straight roads, their presence masked or rendered invisible by the cloaking forest foliage. These relicts of an era when Latvia was part of the USSR were a stark reminder of the past, as were the spookily derelict barracks and Soviet infrastructure that we came across slowly decaying here and there in forest clearings. The Russian abandonment of Latvia was so hasty, so we were told, that on entering the vacated buildings Latvians discovered still-uneaten plates of food on the tables in army mess halls. The fear is that the infrastructure is ready and waiting for Russia to return.
More of a pressing issue for residents of Lithuania, the subject of Kaliningrad seemed to exercise the minds of many Latvians we encountered. Understandably so since this Russian city-state enclave sits on the Baltic shores sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, its only link to the rest of Russia via a narrow strip of Polish land called the Suwalki Gap; this links Kaliningrad to Russian ally Belarus. Proximity to such a land corridor would make me distinctly nervous if I lived nearby.
Here and there along Latvia’s Baltic Coast we came across signboards that reminded visitors of the country’s Soviet era past and all the restrictions that came with that. When we visited, the beaches had lost of traces of that past and were studded with Baltic Amber. ©Andrew Cleave/Nature Photographers Ltd
Nature had begun to soften the edges of Latvia’s Soviet era buildings and nesting Swifts now occupied the bunk rooms and mess halls, accessing them via the smashed windows. By coincidence Latvian forests also provided us with an opportunity to see what we in the UK regard as this urban species nesting in tree holes in remote forest. ©Andrew Cleave/Nature Photographers Ltd
I first visited Romania in the early 1990s not long after the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Reminders of former Russian influence were evident everywhere, in the brutalist architecture and demeanour of many of the inhabitants. The buildings reminded me of a trip to Poland made as a student in the early 1970s. In terms of luxury, the Warsaw hotel I stayed in then was comparable to dismal halls of residence I had lived in but with one interesting difference: you had to buy your toilet paper from a ladies who stoically stationed themselves for that purpose on every floor.
Fortunately, my first trip to Romania was far less restrictive partly because I was in the capable hands of Daniel Petrescu, son of Romanian ornithological hero Eugen Petrescu. My first visits focussed on the Danube Delta specialities including Pygmy Cormorant. Subsequently I paid a visit to photograph White-tailed Plovers, a primarily Asian species that appeared to be colonising the region at the time. Any notion that this was a conservation success story was quickly dispelled when the realisation dawned that the birds were refugees. Their appearance coincided with Saddam Hussein’s attempts to drain breeding grounds in the vast Mesopotamian Marshes, not because he hated birds but as punishment of the region’s Marsh Arabs for their support of an attempted coup. Subsequently, habitat restoration in Iraq has occurred to some degree I gather but for whatever reason the plovers seem to have abandoned Romania as a regular breeding ground.
A White-tailed Plover (or White-tailed Lapwing) photographed on Romania’s Black Sea coastal marshes in the 1990s. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
Travelling further afield within former Soviet bloc satellites, I visited the vast country of Kazakhstan in the late 1990s, one of my goals being to photograph Sociable Plovers. Their plight and demise is another tale where the collapse of the USSR and the consequences for human land use have a role to play. But that’s a story in itself and one for another time.
As we drove past this belching Kazakhstan vision of Hell my guide, who had a gallows sense of humour, told me to hold my breath because this was where they extracted the country’s Uranium. I laughed nervously but in the back of my mind I did wonder whether there was some truth in what he was saying, since Kazakhstan is said to hold 12% of the world’s Uranium ore and is the largest producer of the element in its refined form. Those former Soviet states that have mineral or agricultural wealth, or strategic significance, must be feeling distinctly nervous right now. ©Paul Sterry/Nature Photographers Ltd
At Birds on the Brink, our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine and also with its birdlife and natural environments.