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The Big Bird Race

Selected Projects

The Big Bird Race; the Conservation Foundation and Ladbrokes, UK and Australia
The Big Bird Race was conceived as an initiative of the Conservation Foundation and the Tasmanian Nature Conservation Branch, to draw attention to the issue of the damage that poorly-managed long-lining is doing to the populations of albatrosses and other seabirds in the Southern Ocean. This results in the accidental killing of over 100,000 seabirds each year. Working with the Nature Conservation division of the Tasmanian Government, the Big Bird Race was able to satellite track 40 Tasmanian Shy Albatrosses
(Thassalarche cauta) over two years in order to identify their post-fledging dispersal and migration routes.

The project was sponsored by Ladbrokes ( www.ladbrokes.com/bigbirdrace) and has the support of HRH Prince Philip and other leading figures such as Professor David Bellamy OBE and Sir David Attenborough, and managed to draw the plight of albatrosses and other seabirds to the attention of legislators through massive media coverage across all the world's continents, and most particularly in those countries whose fishing fleets are causing this problem.

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