Representativeness and conservation of bird fauna in the Regional Landscape Park “Stilske Gorbogiria”

Abstract

The analysis conducted on the basis of a literature review, museum col-lections and our own surveys in 2010-2019 on the territory of the current Regional Landscape Park “Stilske Gorbogiria”, which is located on the north-east margin of the Bibrsko-Stilsk highland area of Lviv Opilia. The park was established in 2014 with an area of 8909.9 ha. In the paper, we present for the first time the list of birds of the studied territory, because in the past this territory wasn’t studied. Only some frag-mented information can be found in the collections of State Museum of Nat-ural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and in the few publications. In 2010-2019 the authors conducted line transect bird counts on the ter-ritory of the Regional Landscape Park and identified 186 species of birds, that belong to 18 systematic orders and 47 families. The peculiarity of the bird fauna in the region is in the numeric domination of forest species (101 species — 54%) over species of open landscapes (85 species – 46%), what is caused by a high proportion of forests in the park. We found noticeable dominance of breeding species – 123 (66% of total number of species in modern bird fauna of the park) over non-breeding – 63 (34%). 48 (26%) species are sedentary, 18 (10%) – transit, 75 (40%) – migratory, 34 (18%) vagrants and 17 (9%) are wintering. To estimate the conservation value of the territory of Regional Land-scape Park “Stilske Gorbogiria” we analysed the presence of different bird species in various protection lists on national, regional and international lev-els: the Red Book of Ukraine (2009), the "List of rare and endangered spe-cies of animals subject to special protection in the Lviv region" approved by the Lviv Regional Administration were taken into account, the list of Inter-national Union for the Conservation of Nature, the European List of Species of Conservation Concern, the European List of Endangered Birds, lists of the EU Birds Directive, annexes to the Bern, Bonn and Washington agree-ments, as well as special programs for the conservation of certain species ex-isting in Europe. Despite the high bird species diversity in the Bibyrsko-Stilske Gorbogi-ria, nature conservation activities in the region are considered insufficient and often not entirely adequate. This is evidenced by the doubling of the number of species found in this region, in the latest edition of the Red Book of Ukraine, most of which are representatives of floodplain wetlands and old growth forests, as well as day and night raptors. If protection measures will not be undertaken on the territory of the Bibyrsko-Stilske Gorbogiria, following nesting species may disappear: Black Kite, Montagu's Harrier, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Eagle Owl, and Short-eared Owl. All species associated with floodplain biotopes and old forests are also at risk. The disadvantages of environmental policy are proved by the fact that certain species that have a safe status in Europe are in the extinction state in Ukraine. For example, listed in the third edition of the Red Book Montagu's Harrier, Wood Pigeon, Ural Owl, and White-backed Woodpecker.

Keywords

• birds; rare species
• bibyrsko-stilske highland
• protection
• protection lists of international level