New data about marsh harrier distribution in Europe

According to Santi Mañosa, "In the Iberian Peninsula, marsh harrier nesting population has increased in the last three decades; it has recovered from the dramatic situation it experienced in the eighties, as a consequence of the use of organochloride insecticides, wetland drainage and hunting"
These studies analyse the factors that constraint marsh harrier distribution, population (breeding and wintering) superposition, the origin of wintering birds and the requirements of each population fraction. To give an answer to all these questions, traditional techniques (ring recoveries) and more modern ones (species distribution modelling and stable isotope analyses) were combined. All three are fundamental to obtain as much information as possible from the scarce data about birds that are available.

Photo: Marcos Lacasa

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