Migratory birds have been found to steeply decline in recent decades. Research and conservation efforts have mostly focused on protecting breeding habitats or winteringgrounds and only rarely on stopover habitats used by birds during migration although migration is the period when the risk of mortality is the highest. Since most of the migration time is...

The Asian Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis macqueeni) is the largest ground-nesting bird species breeding in Israel and the middle-east. It’s impressive and iconic appearance and behavior have made it a natural flagship species, representing the diverse avifauna of the Negev plains. Unfortunately, this group that includes 26 bird species is also the most severely impacted by...

Birds of prey are top predators that provide important services for maintainingecosystem structure and function. Despite their significant contribution to human culture and economic, their high trophic level and slow life cycle make raptors moresensitive to anthropogenic induced changes, which often bring them to the brinkof extinction. Raptors are among the most threatened vertebrate taxa – about50%...