The second Project Steering Committee meeting
02-10-2020
The second Project Steering Committee (PSC) meeting was organised on the last day of September in Birštonas. The project partners and members of the PSC were informed about the project progress 2019-2020. The practical conservation actions were performed on most of the project areas, thus the area of the suitable breeding habitats has increased. The terns’ breeding season also brough some challenges – hydrological drought, predators and human activities had a negative effect on the birds’ breeding in some of the areas, therefore participants discussed possible mitigation measures. Participants also discussed some other project’s implementation issues, related to the elaboration of the nature management plans, designation of new SPA etc. During the PSC meeting the Monitoring report on the implementation the project actions in 2019 as well as ex-ante and ex-post monitoring report 2019 were approved.
The second part of the day was devoted to the project’s site visit. One of the project partners – the Nemunas Loops Regional Park Administration has performed practical habitat management works on the Nemunas river islands. Woody vegetation was removed as well as a new gravel beach was established. All these measures showed a positive trend of the breeding population of Common and Little terns. The protective shelters proved to be very effective measure on bare sandy river islands – they provided protection to the terns’ chicks not only from the air predators but also from the overheating. The participants also discussed which measures should be applied on the islands in the long-term perspective.
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