During the late 1990ies scaring by farmers was the most common source of disturbance for cranes in the region Darß-Zingst bodden chain and island Rügen. Nowadays the situation changed and more often crane tourists do disturb the birds. Unfortunately the touristic infrastructure didn’t grew as fast as the interest in these majestic large birds.
In opposite to many other bird species cranes have a quite large flight distance of 150 to 300 meters to humans. If this distance between cranes and humans is closer than this, cranes quite often are disturbed and fly off. This results in higher energy costs for the birds, that has to be compensated by higher feeding activities, which also raises the possibility of accidents.
Therefore, Crane Conservation Germany is working hard to minimize such disturbances by providing a lot of information material in the region, by running crane observation stations and with help of several excursions to feeding and roosting sites for crane tourists. Also many volunteer crane rangers are helping in spring and autumn to inform and guide crane tourists at several observation sites.
You can also help to support our work by observing cranes without disturbances or you can support us personally and financially. Many thanks in advance.