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Series exploring the complex interface between a growing human population and wildlife

Monty Don presents a series exploring the complex interface between a growing human population and wildlife

Shared Planet: Pit Stops and Stopovers

23/12/2014

Pit Stops and Stopovers

BBC Radio 4 - Shared Planet, Pit Stops and Stopovers

Can we share the planet with migrating birds along the whole of their flight path?

Migrating birds exemplify the problems of our sharing the planet with wildlife. These birds fly thousands of kilometres, with many species needing protected stopover places to feed.

The Amur Falcon and the Swan Goose are both migrating birds. These birds, like many other migrating birds, need to rest, feed and refresh en route. Some journeys are thousands of miles and rich feeding habitat is disappearing for development. Wetlands, estuaries and coastlines are often the focus of industrial expansion, tourism and new housing, yet they are also the places most needed by migrating waders. Inland there are problems too as water bodies, scrub and insect rich grasslands are quickly taken over for agriculture and urban development. What can be done? In Nagaland in north-eastern India the Amur falcon has recently congregated at a newly built reservoir to feed on the rich insect life that it supports. Hundreds of thousands, millions even, of these small birds of prey come together for a few days and in the past have been heavily hunted and trapped for food. Yet local people, encouraged by NGOs and the churches, have decided to let the birds be. In America the migrating monarch butterfly is being helped by people planting nectar rich flowers and protecting the trees they like to roost in. Some of the challenges are huge, others easy to solve. Monty Don explores the trials of migration.

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