Police protection (From Salisbury Journal)

Police protection

2:33pm Wednesday 12th April 2006 in Rural Focus By Roland Batten

WILTSHIRE police has offered help to the Great Bustard project by donating a number of mobile phones to tractor drivers in Saratov, in Russia.

The reason is all to do with the collection of Great Bustard eggs from nests uncovered or destroyed during farming operations.

Director of the Great Bustard group on Salisbury Plain, Dave Waters for 12 years a serving officer with Wiltshire police (whose banner features the bird) explained: "It is an unfortunate consequence of farming methods used in Saratov that a large number of eggs are destroyed each year.

"We work with the National Academy of Science of the Russian Federation to collect some of the abandoned eggs and incubate them artificially, and the chicks reared are subsequently released by us on Salisbury Plain and in Saratov. One of the problems has been to get the eggs from the farms to the incubators before they cool down or, on hot days, even overheat.

"The huge size of the landscape exacerbates this problem. Individual fields may be over 100 square kilometres, so even being in the same field as the team of cultivating tractors may mean project staff are several miles from the disturbed nests."

With the telephones, tractor drivers will be able to alert project staff to the presence of a nest, which can be inspected more quickly and then either protected or the eggs in it rescued.

Dave added: "It will be an experiment but, if successful, it will make a real difference to the fortunes of some of the disturbed nests."