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UPM, FINNISH MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND OSPREY FOUNDATION ARE FOLLOWING THE LIFE OF JUKKA THE OSPREY
Friday 27. November 2009 - The Finnish male osprey Jukka is enjoying his winter in Cameroon, Africa. Jukka took off from Finland on 24 September and travelled for one month through Europe until he reached his final destination. Jukka's autumn migration was a long one. He flew the 6,770 kilometres' journey from Finland to Cameroon at an average speed of 300km/day.
UPM, the Finnish Museum of Natural History and the Osprey Foundation continue their cooperation, started in 2007, to track the life of Jukka. The project will ensure that ospreys’ habitat needs are met as a part of sustainable forest management.
The partners have monitored Jukka since summer 2009 with the help of the newest generation of GPS-Argos satellite transmitter. Jukka inherited the transmitter from the male osprey Pete, who perished in April 2008 in Morocco on his way back north. Luckily the transmitter was found and returned to Finland, ready to be fitted on Jukka.
While Jukka was flying through Europe this autumn, his transmitter sent a great deal of valuable information of osprey’s migration route to researchers. Jukka surprised them: he did not follow a mature osprey’s usual route to Nigeria. In stead, he ended up in Cameroon.
The highlights of Jukka’s migration included a nine days pit stop at a fish farm in Poland and a fast-track over Bosnia-Herzegovina mountains with a maximum speed of 43km/h. Jukka also surprised researchers by taking off into the night from Italy in early hours on 13 October. He crossed the Mediterranean Sea and landed to Africa on 14 October after travelling 1055 km. This was the first time researchers tracked an osprey starting migration in night time.
In spring 2010, Jukka’s migration back to Finland can be followed closely on the website of Finnish Museum of Natural History at http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/english/. The site includes a diary and a map of Jukka’s autumn 2009 migration, as well as a map of his winter fishing grounds in Cameroon.
The cooperation with the Osprey Foundation is part of UPM’s global biodiversity programme. “We have been closely cooperating with the Osprey Foundation to develop an osprey breeding site network in Finland by building artificial nests in company owned forests,” says Timo Lehesvirta, Director, Sustainable Forestry.
UPM is storing ospreys’ nesting places in the company’s database and mapping system so that the special needs are considered as part of sustainable forest management.