In the autumn of 2011, I joined a raptor monitoring project in Georgia, founded by three of my friends in 2008. The project has since then increasingly showed the importance of the area as a migration bottleneck, but has also shown the difficult relationship between man an nature. In the 2011 edition of the project, one of the founders – Johannes Jansen – did some research about the impact and motives of hunters that shoot raptors in the area. I joined Johannes in the field to document these practices. In the future the project aims to halt these practices, by increasing public awareness, education, development of local ecotourism and consultation with policy makers.
More information on this project can be found on www.batumiraptorcount.org.