The National Museum of Natural History in Paris (France), along with partner organizations from five countries (France, Czechia, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands), coordinates the project HABITRACK “Habitat tracking for the conservation of huntable bird species.” Funded by the European Union, as part of the HORIZON-CL6-2023-BIODIV-01-4 program, it aims to provide better methods and knowledge to improve the conservation status of EU-protected species and habitats, with a specific focus on huntable bird species listed in Annex II of the Birds Directive (Area B).
The HABITRACK project focuses on 14 species of huntable birds with non-secure conservation status in Europe: the Black-tailed godwit, the Eurasian curlew, Common redshank, Spotted redshank, Eurasian oystercatcher, Northern lapwing, Common snipe, ruff, Common pochard, Northern pintail, Eurasian wigeon, European turtle dove, garganey, and Bean goose. These species are in decline, and there is a severe lack of information on their habitat quality and quantity requirements. This information is needed to effectively organise the management and restoration of their habitats and ensure their conservation status is restored to a favourable level.
HABITRACK proposes to use, as an innovative tool, high-resolution data on individual geolocations through extensive deployment of GPS tags for each species. This new data will contribute to the growing effort across Europe and beyond to fill gaps in species knowledge and overcome many methodological challenges through integrated modeling frameworks and new valuations of tracking data using the multiple sensors embedded in the tracking devices.
