New nests set up for Danube Delta's white-tailed eagles

Ecological agents of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve (ARBDD) have set up ten nests for Delta's white-tailed eagles, a threatened species that is the object of an international monitoring project.In a press release, the ARBDD says the 10 nests were built under a DANUBEPARKS - The Network of Danube Protected Areas project for Developing and implementing transnational strategies for the conservation of the natural heritage of the Danube in an attempt to replace collapsing nests.

'The need to build new nests is not the result of some increase in the eagle population, although there has been a slight increase over the past decades in this population. It is rather the need for a staged 

replacement of old nests, which volume exceeds one cubic metre, because of the debris that has invaded the nests in time. Such nests often collapse together with the branches on which they are built because of storms, especially when the nest has been soaked with water because of precipitation,' the release says. 

In November 2010, under the same project, the ARBDD posted on its website - www.ddbra.ro - videos of a white-tailed eagle nest that were shot May 28 - July 6, 2010 in the Danube Delta. The DANUBEPARKS project, which main objective is to improve the conservation of emblematic species in the Danube protected areas, 

started on March 1, 2009 and will end on February 29, 2012. The ARBDD is the only Romanian project partner of Nationalpark Donau-Auen of Austria, the project leader. Other project partners are protected nature reserves and areas of Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Germany. 

The white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) is the largest aquiline species in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. According to the ARBDD, there are nearly 20 white-tailed 

eagle nests in the Danube Delta.AGERPRES