Funding cutting-edge ornithology
The Brenda and Tony Gibbs Award is funded by a legacy left to the BOU to specifically fund ‘research on tracking and migration studies including the use of new technologies’.

Awards up to £20,000 are aimed at funding discovery science, technological advances, high-profile conservation and research with societal impact that delivers a step change in the understanding of the movements and migrations of birds.

2023 Award | £20,000

Impacts of Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) on two nocturnal birds – a natural experiment triggered by the collapse of power supply in South Africa

Principal Investigator
Associate Professor Arjun Amar
FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, South Africa

Team members
Associate Professor Robert Thomson, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, South Africa
Dr Chevonne Reynolds, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Taking advantage of natural experiments represent exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for testing the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on wildlife. Excitingly, but depressingly (!), South Africa is in the throes of its own natural experiment – called load-shedding (rolling blackouts). These scheduled blackouts provide a unique opportunity to undertake research to better understand the impacts of artificial light at night (ALAN) on nocturnal birds. ALAN is the illumination that is created by human-made sources of light (streetlights, buildings, houses) and has been linked to a range of negative effects on wildlife populations and the environment. However, most of our understanding of the impacts of ALAN comes from correlative studies along the urban-to-rural gradient.

Load-shedding causes meaningful and obvious changes in ALAN across large areas of Cape Town and offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand the effects of ALAN on nocturnal birds, in an experimental and not correlative fashion.

Arjun and his team will explore how ALAN influences the movements of two nocturnal bird species – the Spotted Eagle-Owl and the Spotted Thick-knee – by fitting trackers to territory holding birds and exploring whether habitat selection varies depending on the experimental curtailment of exposure to ALAN during load-shedding.

Images
Spotted Eagle-owl Bubo africanus | flowcomm CC BY 2.0 Wikimedia Commons