Migration
of the Great White Pelican
from Europe to Africa

The Great White Pelican (Pelecanus onocro-talus) is a large bird (120-180 cm in body length, 7-13 kg body mass) widely distribu-ted in eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Pelicans migrate from Europe to Africa in fall, and return to their breeding grounds in Europe in spring. Israel, despite its small size, is a bottleneck into which all or a large part of the European populations of this species concentrate during fall migration (70,000 individuals per year). Most stop over in Israel for several days and continue southward to Africa, but several hundred stay for the winter.

While the population size in Africa is relatively stable, their numbers in Europe decreased sharply in the first half of this century due to human activity such as the drainage of natural feeding sites, hunting, etc. Hence, the aquaculture sites used for intensive fisheries have become their favourite feeding places, either during migration or during winter. In recent years the fishing industry has reported huge damage to its yields, especially in Israel during the fall migration. Researchers from France (Alain Crivelli) and Israel (Ido Izhaki, Zeev Arad and Marva Shmueli) are conducting a comprehensive study to find practical solutions to preventing pelicans from damaging fish ponds, but also to find alternative food resources to ensure their survival along their migration routes.

One of the questions we are studying is where in Africa most pelicans spend their winter. We started a very encouraging preliminary satellite-tracking program in January 1995 by attaching a 95-g Microwave Telemetry Inc. transmitter to a one-year old pelican in its wintering grounds in Israel. The duty cycle was 48 hours off, 8 hours on. The pelican left Israel at the end of April 1995, and in five days crossed Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania to reach the Danube. We tracked it for more than five months as it wandered in the Danube area but stayed away from the breeding colony. In the first half of October 1995 the pelican left Romania and migrated back to Israel, where it spent its second winter. The Argos location results again taught us a lot about its winter movements. The next stage in our program will be to attach transmitters to four pelicans as they continue their migration to Africa, and discover where their wintering grounds are.