Lake Ladoga Ornitholigical Station
26th August- 2. September 2019 Our second research meeting for curators were in St. Petersburg and at the…
Browsing Category
The Olonets spring migration stopover in Southern Karelia is one of the largest halting places for birds in the North-West of Europe. In between April and May about 100-200 species and 25 000 geese are registered on a daily basis. The Karelian Research Centre have had a continual monitoring program here since 1991. Unfortunately this area is becoming increasingly popular with hunters threatening the whole migration stopover since the birds may change their routes due to the hunt. Olonets council organises a Geese Festival every year after the end of the game season, which is a very popular event. The hunting period where geese are killed is prior to the Geese festival, where these birds are being celebrated as a part of human culture. This shows an intriguing contradiction in the human relation to birds. It brings up questions of how conflicts of territory between humans and birds can be handled and in what way migration of birds could be protected. The situation in Olonets reflects that people also have a love for and great connection to birds, and this is an opening to conversations and influence to change the more negative aspects of the human- bird relations.
Russian artist Natalia Egorova and the Norwegian sound artist Frank Ekeberg will be working alongside the ornithologists, the locals and the migrating birds around the conflict between hunters, researchers and birds. The Nest will be hosted by the Karelian Research Centre in Petrozavodsk through the resident ornithologists Maria Matantseva and Sergey Simonov. The Nest starts out with a research phase in place in May 2020 and a practical phase in May 2021.