Originally published December 22, 2008
The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is a conservation organisation dedicated to saving wetlands for wildlife and for people.
It was founded in 1946 by Sir Peter Scott, a naturalist and an artist. He bought the first wetland site for the trust and for many years he hosted a TV programme about wildfowl and habitat preservation. The programmes were a great hit, and an entire generation of English lovers of wildlife and the countryside owe their interest in part at least to those programmes.
But as Sir Peter Scott recognized, it is not enough to see wildlife on television, and it was always part of his vision that Trust sites should not only be areas of conservation but also places where visitors could see wildlife.
The WWT now has nine visitor centres in the UK and has captive wildfowl collections from all over the world. Flocks of wildfowl, some in their tens of thousands, also visit.
The Trust also does essential work internationally for the preservation of wetlands under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty signed in Ramsar in Iran in 1971. Under that convention, various national agencies cooperate to preserve wetlands and the wildlife that depend on wetland ecosystems.
Martin Mere Wetland Centre is a WWT site about five miles from the coast in Lancashire in the North of England, facing the Irish Sea.
It is formed around a series of meres or shallow lakes, which are home for the season to thousands upon thousands of wildfowl.
At the moment (December 2008) there are over 6,000 Pinkfoot Geese and over 1,000 Whooper swans overwintering at Martin Mere. The photo here is of a greylag goose, which is a close relative of the Pinkfoot.
The Whooper swans will leave in March and fly to Iceland for the summer. It is well known that they fly the same route year after year, but their precise route is not known.
Wind Farms
Because there are more and more wind farms being built along their route, the swans are colliding with them. So the WWT and the wind farm development companies are working together to work out where the wind farms should be sited to minimise the risk of collisions.
To find out the route of the migrating Whooper swans, for example, the WWT fitted transmitters to the backs of some swans.
For their flight at migration time, every bit of extra weight puts the swans at risk. So in order to be at their optimum weight for the flight, Whooper swans stop drinking for a period before they begin their annual migration.
Some birds weigh 12kg (26lbs) or more, and I guess that like me, you would think that bigger birds are stronger and more likely to make a successful flight. The staff at the Wildlife Centre know, however, that a bird that weighs about 10kg (22lbs) is most likely to make the journey successfully.
Now WWT has feedback from the journeys to enable it to work with the wind farm operators to site the wind turbines with least risk to wildlife.