Lack of water in the wetlands

The monitoring of breeding sites in the district of Vorpommern-Rügen will be finished soon. A first conclusion: As in the last two years there is a serious shortage of water. About half of the breeding sites have almost or completely run dry. The picture on the left side shows a breeding site in an alder marsh forest which is the most frequent type of breeding site in this region. Because of the lack of water many cranes did not even start to build a nest. The alders rootplates on the photo overgrown with vegetation indicates that the average water level is up to half a meter higher than in this spring.

Volunteers of the Crane Conservation Germany report on a similar poor situation in Brandenburg. The water supplies have not been refilled since the drought in summer 2018. Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania and Brandenburg are the federal states with the largest numbers of breeding pairs in Germany. Therefore, it is unfortunately very likely to assume bad breeding results of the Common Crane in Germany in the season of 2021 – the third year in a row.

The following pictures show two breeding sites, which are completely fallen dry this year.