Great Bustards Thriving in Morocco

Morocco made progress towards stabilizing the population of great bustards (Otis tarda) thanks to the local initiative supported by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), according to the union.
The IUCN’s project enabled surveillance and carried out awareness campaigns, besides promoting the legal protection of the remaining sanctuaries where great bustards breed.
The Moroccan organization “Nature Solutions” spearheaded efforts to organize the national census of the great bustard during the past two years. The Moroccan Agency for Water and Forests and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences) have both supported this effort.
The “leks” are essential places where the species can reproduce. However, the lack of this habitat would significantly restrict the number of possibilities for successful breeding. Five of these breeding locations, or “leks,” have dramatically decreased in number this year alone northern Morocco.
The project of this association, funded by the IUCN’s Transcap 2 program (supported by the General Directorate for Cooperation of the Balearic Islands) and earlier by the PPI-OSCAN program, both coordinated by IUCN as part of the “Mubadarat” platform, has allowed the employment of guards in both of the remaining leks in addition to organizing training workshops and awareness-raising activities with hunters and farmers onsite.
The 2023 national census, carried out in March by a group of Moroccan and Spanish observers, monitored the ‘leks’ and concentrated on areas in Morocco where the great Bustard is known to have been present within the last twenty years.
The census demonstrated that great bustards are mostly concentrated in Tleta-Rissana and Araoua (in the Tangier-Asilah and Larache prefectures) as they are the only regions providing suitable conditions for the species’ breeding.