Until now more than 100 bird and mammal species have been found to benefit from carrion in Western Europe. Research by many students provided interesting results and fresh insight. Online videos have helped to educate the Dutch public about the importance of carrion in nature.Online videos have helped to educate the Dutch public about the importance of carrion in nature.With ecologists at the Brandenburg University of Technology starting the Necros Project in eastern Germany at roughly the same time, we soon joined forces. But education has helped a great deal, generating both understanding and enthusiasm. Of course, not everyone wants to see a carcass in nature. Several public surveys have since shown that Dutch people are increasingly acceptant of such an approach. A growing number of nature organisations chose to give road kills a final resting place in nature, rather than an immediate, one-way route to destruction, as is the case in most of Europe. There was significant interaction between individuals and species, such as magpies picking the tail feathers of buzzards, and foxes chasing away beech martens (a roe deer of 18 kilogrammes is clearly a prize worth fighting for).įollowing the positive feedback from the scavenging webcam we were able to scale up the project, with pilot areas established in the southern part of the Netherlands.
People enjoyed seeing buzzards, crows, magpies, foxes and beech martens enjoy their free meal. The responses where overwhelmingly positive. Through the webcam, thousands of people watched the decomposition of road kills (mainly roe deer). A growing number of nature organisations are now choosing to give road kills a final resting place in the wild, thereby providing a valauble food source for Europe’s scavengers. In 2008, for the first time ever, we established a publicly viewable scavenging webcam with the Dutch State Forestry Service. The absence of essential minerals for plant growth is having a massive impact on the food web, with the effect exacerbated by anthropogenic nitrogen deposition.ĪRK Nature has always been a pioneering NGO, working from vision to practice since it was founded in 1989. Last but not least, the harvesting of wood and the decline in wild herbivore populations is leading to a deficiency of minerals in sandy soils. Many scavengers are now at risk of poisoning by lead ammunition and veterinary drugs like diclofenac (veterinary diclofenac is a drug used to treat livestock like cows and pigs when livestock carcasses are left in nature, vultures feed on them, ingest the diclofenac, and are poisoned and die). We are now witnessing a massive decline of scavengers, with struggling vulture populations dependent on artificial feeding stations. The devastating results of this disappearance of wild carrion can be found everywhere. This typical scavenging scene should be a common sight across much of Europe. A closer look reveals a diverse cleaning crew of beetles and flies working diligently to process what is left of the large mammal. As a vulture’s head disappears into a carcass, a beech marten bares its teeth at a red fox intent on taking a bite of the same carrion. As a result, much of the biological “waste” has disappeared from the European ecosystem. Wilderness has become arable land, populations of wild grazers are often managed at low densities, and legislation demands the immediate removal of dead livestock. But across the European continent today, wild herbivore carcasses have become a rare commodity. But on closer and more considered inspection, the necessity of carrion in nature quickly becomes apparent.Ĭarrion should be a normal part of the circle of life.
For the majority of people, this is not the most pleasant of scenes.
In line with a lot of conservation work, the project has needed time to bear fruit, but I think it’s safe to say we’re already achieving promising results.Ī scavenging vignette typically presents a dead animal, with scavengers opening up its carcass and the flesh being consumed by an array of other animals. This timescale extends back even further when you take into account the first booklet bridging carrion with conservation, which was published in the Netherlands in 2005. On starting this blog I realised that almost a decade has passed since ARK Nature’s Dutch project “Dood doet Leven” (“Circle of Life”) began.