Active European warzone impacts raptor migration

Human conflicts can have impacts on wildlife, from direct mortality and environmental damage to the displacement of people, changing institutional dynamics and altering economies.1Gaynor K.M. Fiorella K.J. Gregory G.H. Kurz D.J. Seto K.L. Withey L.S. Brashares J.S. War and wildlife: linking armed conflict to conservation.Front. Ecol. Environ. 2016; 14: 533-542Crossref Scopus (101) Google Scholar,2Sutherland W.J. Dias M.P. Dicks L.V. Doran H. Entwistle A.C. Fleishman E. Gibbons D.W. Hails R. Hughes A.C. Hughes J. et al.A horizon scan of emerging global biological conservation issues for 2020.Trends Ecol. Evol. 2020; 35: 81-90Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (39) Google Scholar,3Gallo-Cajiao E. Dolšak N. Prakash A. Mundkur T. Harris P.G. Mitchell R.B. Davidson N. Hansen B. Woodworth B.K. Fuller R.A. et al.Implications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine for the governance of biodiversity conservation.Front. Conserv. Sci. 2023; 4989019Crossref Scopus (5) Google Scholar Extreme anthropogenic disturbances related to conflict may act as a barrier to migrating birds and increase the energetic costs of migration.4Kikuchi D.M. Nakahara T. Kitamura W. Yamaguchi N.M. Estimating potential costs of cumulative barrier effects on migrating raptors: a case study using global positioning system tracking in Japan.in: Bispo R. Bernardino J. Coelho H. Costa J.L. Wind Energy and Wildlife Impacts: Balancing Energy Sustainability with Wildlife Conservation. Springer International Publishing, 2019: 51-65Crossref Scopus (2) Google Scholar On February 24th, 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, with targeted attacks on Kyiv and the eastern regions.5Guterres, A. (2022). Statement by the Secretary-General – on Ukraine. 24 February 2022. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-02-24/statement-the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-ukraineGoogle Scholar By March 3rd, when the first of 19 tagged Greater Spotted Eagles entered Ukraine on migration, the conflict had spread to most major cities, including parts of western Ukraine.6Report of the Emergency Relief CoordinatorHumanitarian situation in Ukraine and the humanitarian response (2022).https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3967062?v=pdfGoogle Scholar We quantified how conflict impacted the migratory behavior of this species using GPS tracks and conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project7Clionadh R. Linke A. Hegre H. Karlsen J. Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset.J. Peace Res. 2010; 47: 651-660Crossref Scopus (984) Google Scholar,8Raleigh C. Kishi R. Linke A. Political instability patterns are obscured by conflict dataset scope conditions, sources, and coding choices.Humanit. Soc. Sci. Commun. 2023; 1074Google Scholar in a quasi-experimental before-after control-impact design, accounting for meteorological conditions. Migrating eagles were exposed to conflict events along their migration through Ukraine and exhibited different behavior compared with previous years, using fewer stopover sites and making large route deviations. This delayed their arrival to the breeding grounds and likely increased the energetic cost of migration, with sublethal fitness effects. Our findings provide a rare window into how human conflicts affect animal behavior and highlight the potential impacts of exposure to conflict events or other extreme anthropogenic disturbances on wildlife.