Monitoring of visitors, effect of visitor guidance and impact of human activity on gravel breeders

The first project objective is to test visitor monitoring using wildlife cameras and assess the cost of this method (including data extraction and analysis). The second project objective is to draw on the visitor monitoring data collected to document human activity and determine to what extent the frequency of such activity is linked to certain times and areas. The third objective is to methodically test the monitoring of behaviour and breeding losses among breeding Common Sandpiper and Little Ringed Plover.

Visitor monitoring is carried out automatically (with wildlife cameras) and manually (on-site observation). Wildlife cameras are used at selected sites to analyse whether and how the guidance measures have an effect on human activity. Additional cameras are installed in the vicinity of Common Sandpiper and Little Ringed Plover nests to detect human activity. Temperature loggers are placed in a selection of nests which show exactly when the birds have left their nests and stopped breeding.

Visitor monitoring provides information on how many people are in the area, when and where, and whether or not they comply with the relevant rules. These findings will provide a basis for adapting visitor guidance measures where necessary and making recommendations for the further development of visitor guidance in (revitalised) floodplain areas. Linking visitor monitoring with the monitoring of breeding Common Sandpiper and Little Ringed Plover helps identify and analyse the effect of human disturbance on the breeding activity of these species.

Visitors make active use of the floodplain area in Bever and are only absent between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., with numbers increasing at weekends, on holidays and when the weather is fine. It is pleasing to note that less than 5% of all recorded visitors leave the pathways. Since human activity at sensitive sites away from the pathways during the breeding season is to be regarded as a disturbance of breeding activities, an improvement in visitor guidance is desirable from a bird conservation perspective. All in all, recolonisation of the area by the Common Sandpiper and the Little Ringed Plover has been extremely successful.

• Prof. Dr. Reto Rupf, School of Life Sciences and Facility Management Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Wädenswil, Schweiz
• Dr. Martin Bulla, Max Planck Institut für Ornithologie, Seewiesen, Deutschland

• Stiftung Yvonne Jacob