UPM Biofore Magazine 1-2019

THE OSPREY IS a useful biodiversity indicator in many different ways. As a large predatory bird at the top of the food chain, it tells us about the status of local fish stocks and trends in environmental water quality.

they maximise their use of the wind. Ospreys also navigate to familiar places to feed. One particular osprey always stops for a week to fuel up at the same lake in Ukraine while migrating.” The osprey is an interesting bird with a cosmopolitan distribution: it lives on every inhabited continent. The osprey’s conservation status in Finland currently looks brighter than it has in decades, as it is no longer on the red list of threatened species. But the sea hawk’s fortunes have not always been so bright. From the 1930s onwards, bounties were paid for ospreys in Finland because they were believed to deplete fish stocks. Ospreys are indeed fish-eaters, but they are not the reason for decreasing fish populations. Ospreys also face other threats such as environmental toxins, to which other migratory birds are similarly exposed in many countries. Revealing raptor The osprey is a useful biodiversity indicator in many different ways. As a large predatory bird at the top of the food chain, it tells us about the status of local fish stocks and trends

Bird’s eye view Ornithologist Juhani Koivu has explored biodiversity from a different perspective – a bird’s-eye view – ever since he was a little boy. Koivu is the founder of the globally recognised Finnish Osprey Foundation. The foundation provides financial support and expert advice for osprey research and conservation projects, as well as for the essential work carried out by hobbyists, which includes banding, building of artificial nests, mapping of osprey migration routes, nesting, feeding, distribution and public information work. Based at the Osprey Foundation’s conservation centre in Kangasala, Koivu explains that the first ospreys are just returning to the local fishing waters from their migratory journey to Africa. “They are phenomenal navigators and live in the same nest their entire lives. Our tracking has shown that they are able to return to the exact same nest in Utsjoki – down to the very centimetre – from thousands of kilometres away in South Africa, for example. The only deviations from their routes are due to the winds: They are large birds that glide on a wingspan of over 1.5 metres when extended, and

Extensive osprey research provides a foundation for the future preservation of this fascinating bird species.

in environmental water quality. Ospreys also provide valuable

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