Page 16 - Wildlife News December 2015
P. 16
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To minimise the disruption caused by planned
offshore wind farms, Alderney Wildlife Trust is
tracking its gannets with GPS
david chapman Aproject run by the Alderney One individual went as far as the middle In years to come the project will study
Wildlife Trust, the British Trust for of the North Sea, and another travelled the effects of these installations on the
Ornithology and the University of more than 500 miles in 36 hours. behaviour and productivity of seabirds.
Liverpool has shown the huge distances
covered by Britain’s biggest seabird. The Track A Gannet (TAG) project is the “TAG increases our understanding of
first to provide real-time tracking of how dependent seabirds are upon areas
Researchers attached tiny GPS devices seabirds to the general public. It also has proposed for development. After this
to 26 northern gannets nesting on a GannetCam, allowing views of the year’s research has been assessed the
Alderney this spring and summer. The gannets’ breeding colony in season. Trust plans to redesign and repeat the
resulting signals showed the birds study in 2016,” said Roland Gauvain,
foraging throughout the English Channel. The Trust hopes the data will influence Manager of the Alderney Wildlife Trust.
the planning of wind farms in the future.
16 Wildlife news: national