2021

This Year’s Nesting Success of Black Storks has been Significantly Affected by the Dry Spring and Summer

The monitoring of the nesting success of the specially protected bird species – the black stork –has been completed. The project is implemented by JSC “Latvia's State Forests” (LVM) within the framework of a project financed by the Nature Protection Board. The data obtained during the monitoring show that both the number of nests visited by storks and the number of young storks in 2021 are significantly lower than in previous years. Researchers from LVM and the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava” have found very different nesting success across different regions of Latvia.

“The least successful nests have been found to be in the regions of North Kurzeme, Zemgale and Vidusdaugava. One of the possible reasons for the low nesting success in these regions is the drought of the soil, which has apparently negatively affected the number and availability of the most important feed animals for black storks – frogs and small fish – in the feeding habitats suitable for storks. According to the European Drought Observatory (EDO), the longest dry soil during the black stork nesting period was in Kurzeme and Zemgale regions. Here it was drier than usual from the first decade of April to the first decade of July, which is the nesting period for the black stork.

It has also been found that in the regions of East Vidzeme and North Latgale, where there was a higher number of successful nests and a higher number of young birds in the nests, the soil had high humidity throughout May and the first two decades of June. Sufficient feed in conditions of high and normal soil moisture ensures continuous hatching of eggs, as well as the survival of young storks,” says LVM Senior Environmental Expert Uģis Bergmanis.

Approximately 80% of the known black stork nesting sites in Latvia are located in the forests managed by JSC “Latvia's State Forests”. In order to plan appropriate protection measures and assess the dynamics of the population, which has been negative in recent decades, LVM has been systematically monitoring the population and nesting success of nests in the forests managed by LVM already since 2013. In the course of the monitoring of black stork nests, the population of the nests and the nesting success are measured; the monitoring also includes further chemical analysis of any failed eggs.