130925-studie-wildlife-comeback-in-europe

Habitat preferences
In its breeding range in Europe, the White stork
inhabits a variety of open habitats in the vicinity of
water, including wetland margins, moist grassland,
paddy fields, irrigated cropland or pasture. Nest
sites are usually elevated on cliff ledges, tree tops,
roofs or pylons [2, 3] .
Scale Status Justification
Global
Least Concern
(since 1994; was
considered Near
Threatened in 1988)
Extremely large range
Increasing population trend
Very large population size
Europe Depleted (SPEC 2) Increasing but not yet recovered from large
EU25
Depleted
historical decline
Legal protection and conservation status
The White stork is listed on Annex I of the EU Birds
Directive, Annex II of the Bern Convention and
Annex II of the Convention on Migratory Species [9] ,
under which it is covered by the African-Eurasian
Waterbird Agreement (AEWA). The eastern
and western populations are currently listed in
columns C (category 1) and A (category 3b) in the
AEWA action plan, respectively [7] .
Abundance:
current status and changes
The latest International White stork Census (2004/5)
estimated the current population size in Europe to
be 213,690 breeding pairs (Table 2). In descending
order, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania,
Latvia, Russia and Portugal hold the largest numbers
of breeding White stork, together supporting 82%
of the total European population [6] . This highlights
the importance of central and eastern Europe and
southwestern Europe for the species.
A decreasing trend in White stork populations
in Europe was noted since the early 1900s [13, 14] and
international censuses of White stork breeding
populations have been carried out regularly since
1934 [6] . Numbers declined up to 1984 (Figure 1), but
trends varied across the breeding range [5, 15] . The
western population experienced the most dramatic
declines and the species went extinct in parts of its
range, including Belgium in 1895 [15] , Sweden in 1950
and Switzerland by 1958 [16] . The eastern population
also decreased, but at a lower rate, while in some
countries in eastern Europe (Poland, Slovakia,
Estonia, Belarus and Ukraine) numbers were stable
or increased [15, 17] .
The recovery of White stork populations
became apparent from the 1994/5 census [4] and
the trend continued to be positive in the 2004/5
census (Figure 1, Table 2). Growth rates in the
western population were higher than in the eastern
population, where some populations remained
stable (e.g. Belarus and Ukraine). However, in
Denmark the decline was ongoing, and the species
was declared extinct in 2008 [18] .
Distribution:
current status and changes
Evidence suggests the species was much more
widespread in the past. White stork distribution
historically probably included most of France [13] , as
well as Greece, where the species’ range retreated
to the north of the country in the 1800s [22] . There
Table 1.
Global IUCN Red List
status [10] , European
population and SPEC
status [11] and EU
population status [12]
of White stork.
Figure 2.
Current breeding
distribution of White
stork in Europe and
historical distribution
in 1949 [13] and in the
1980s [21] .
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