We Built a Wall. 3 Months Later, This Happened.

Three months ago we did something crazy. We took a bunch of shovels and headed to this little island in the middle of the river to build a sand wall. Yeah, an actual sand wall for birds. Now we're heading back by kayak to see if it's actually work and what we found really surprised us. If we wouldn't restore this wall the number would be less? The number would be zero. Zero? We're driving to save the population of sand martins in Slovenia. This is sand martin and these birds are in trouble. They breed in the sand walls which are usually made by the river itself but because of the lack of water the walls are not created anymore and birds disappearing from this area. That's why we're here. We are now by the river Drava and we see that it's not really a lot of water here because the majority of the water from Drava is flowing in the channel for the hydropower in Zlatulice. Approximately 20 cubic meter of water is flowing now here. The rest is flowing in channel. It is about 250 cubic meter per second. This is the old original riverbed of Drava river but it has only five percent of the water flow of the normal ones. Current of the river is not strong enough to create those kinds of sandy banks because most of the water goes into a channel for the electricity production. The place we choose located on a small island and it's much safer than mainland because it's harder for predators like foxes or badgers to reach it. So that's the wall we're gonna restore. You can see already nests from the last year. So we just pull every material down from top to the ground as straight as possible. Okay some info about San Martins. It's the smallest wall in Europe. It weighs just around 10 grams and it builds burrows up to one meter deep. Because the wall is like this. We don't need to make it like completely flat but a little bit angle here. So it's like a going a bit slip. And that's actually to prevent foxes getting into the burrows. Because if it's completely flat or it goes like this foxes easily can get into the burrows and eat the small chicks. So that's why it's extra job to make it angled. So much trash in here. It's crazy. So much plastic and all kind of stuff. I dug a sock over there as well. And you see the pashtet. They usually don't go lower or in this more like dense material. It's more like clay texture. They always search for the more sandy lines like this one. Lots of time you see the holes that they dig like in line like here, here, here, here. This species they always breed in colonies. They never breed like a single pair or something. They try to build as many nests as possible. But this is also their defense mechanism against predators. Look at this flat clean wall right now. It took us about three hours to clean all of this area. And I'm really curious to come back here after a few months and see the sand martins. I hope they will like it. Well, we did this wall. But I really want to see what the impact of this will be. Hydropower dam provide big portion of electricity for Slovenia. About 20 or 25 percent. The Drava river was almost totally destroyed by this chain. Not just the birds, also fish and everything. Probably with some floods some years there would be like appropriate sandy bank for them. But in most years I think no. So if we would stop species would disappear. And I think this is like a really good example of a little effort that we can do together as a society to have a great impact on the species and help them a lot. So we've been here in April. That's already a few months. Now it's June. And today we're going to use kayaks to reach the sand martins and see what's the progress. Is all the work we've done was useful or not. It's great to kayak through Drava river. At some places it's calm. At others more rapid. We've also seen many different bird species and scenic nature. But still our goal was to reach this tiny island. And after a while we finally made it. Behind me is the wall we restored and so many of them here they're just flying all around all of the places. Crazy. It feels so good. Mara how do you feel? Those houses are so beautiful. So many birds here. It's amazing. Ah it's cool. Look how many of the holes. How many burrows. They're just going out all the time. It's a perfect view. The best thing about sand martins is that they eat mosquitoes. We landed on another small island next to the wall we restored. And this year it was super successful right? How many pairs here? Good 200. 200 pairs. Crazy. How do you think if we wouldn't restore this wall the number would be less? The number will be zero. Zero? Probably zero. Yeah. Wow. Like it looks now we don't have probably a few more years of it because the wall will be too far away from water and will be not protected enough for sand martins. So we'll have to find another place right? We have to find another place for them yeah. We will. The youngsters are so cool. Like look at that. They're waiting by the entrance for their parents to bring some food. Yeah I was not thinking much what the difference it would make when we did the digging in spring but here's the result and it's so beautiful and it's nice to be a part of it. Without the help of volunteers none of this would be here. So yeah it's amazing. Great great feeling. In some of the burrows there are two three or even four chicks together. These holes are so large because they were dug out by predators like foxes or badgers. Even though the sand balls are on the island and we build it under angle some predators still find its way. Well I guess that's just nature. The campaign was successful? Very successful. Very successful. You make a really good job. We can all agree that we cannot just remove the hydropowers now because the percentage of electricity they provide is big. It would be enough if in the spring or in the fall the hydropower companies would release a little bit bigger amounts of water in the river for I don't know one week two weeks. It would create new islands. It would move the gravel downstream. It would create sandy banks from the government from the country and from those companies. I think this would be like very little amount of resources for them. It could make a really big impact here. Here's the video on a very similar topic from the same place about restoration of islands which are specially made for birds. You can watch that. If you want to volunteer with DOBS the link will be under this video. Thank you for watching. You can support our channel, become our Patreon and be brave to act.