Caspian Sea: State of the Environment 2019

hunting is the main reason for the decline in their numbers, alongside the loss of rangelands, the loss of inhabitants and, most significantly, the decline in food resources (Goodman and Dmi- trieva 2016). Climate change, rising sea levels and industrial pollution are thought to contrib- ute to the increasing pressure. For example, glob- al warming is reducing the number of breeding sites on ice (National Contribution). The Caspian Sea is at the crossroads of the mi- gration routes of millions of migratory birds, and the Northern Caspian is a concentrated region in terms of the migration and breeding of waterfowl and waterbird species, including loons, grebes, Pelecaniformes, Anseriformes, rails, Ciconii- formes, waders and gulls, as well as passerine birds, diurnal birds of prey and some other groups. Special attention should be paid to the state of the spring-summer population of colonial nesting birds on Maliy Zhemchuzhny Island, a specially protected area. According to figures from the LU- KOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft project in 2013, there were 14,600 bird pairs, including: 12,000 breeding pairs of Pallas’s gull (species included in the Rus-

sian Federation Red Book), 1,500 pairs of Euro- pean herring gull and 1,100 pairs of Caspian tern. A single instance of another species found in the Russian Federation Red Book – the Rosy pelican, was noted there. The project found that oil pro- duction had no impact on the bird population. Autumn migrations in the Caspian region are more extensive and, as already noted, occur in coastal areas, i.e. in the waters adjacent to LU- KOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft’s licensed areas. As in spring, the migration involves various groups of birds: waterfowl (Anseriformes, Pelecani- formes, grebes), waterbirds (Ciconiiformes, waders, gulls), passerine birds, diurnal birds of prey and so on. Huge numbers of waterfowl winter in the North-Western Caspian, in three wintering ar- eas: the south-western part of the Volga del- ta-front, Kizlyar Bay and waters around the is- lands of Tyuleniy, Kulaly, Morskoy and Rabochiy. The largest wintering of waterfowl takes place in the south-western part of the delta-front. The following species are dominant: whooper swan, mute swan, tufted duck, common pochard, com- mon merganser, smew, common goldeneye and mallard, and in warm winters – greylag goose, common teal and common coot. The following eight species of birds were regis- tered during counts in 2014: European herring gull (Caspian gull subspecies), Pallas’s gull (listed in the Russian Federation and Astrakhan Oblast Red Books), Caspian tern (listed in the Russian Federation and Astrakhan Oblast Red Books), sandwich tern, great cormorant, Dalmatian pel- ican (listed in the Russian Federation and Astra- khan Oblast Red Books), sanderling and Eur- asian skylark (LUKOIL 2015). The South-Eastern Caspian is another location for the mass flight and wintering of birds: in the coastal areas of Turkmenistan there are more than 300 species from various groups. In Jan- uary 2018, about 190,000 waterfowl and water birds were counted. Coot (Fulica atra), tufted duck (Aythya fuligula), greater scaup (Aythya marila), red-crested duck (Netta rufina) and common pochard (Aythya ferina) were found in the biggest numbers.

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