In fact, the societal expectations that endangered species will be protected and conserved continues to grow.

In cooperation with the Ministry of Climate, the Environmental Board (Keskkonnaamet) has completed a draft update of the black stork protection action plan, which proposes to take about 40 percent of the stork's habitats off protected status.

The black stork, Estonian: Must-toonekurg, is a rare species in Estonia, nesting in older natural and primeval forests; very few of these remain, and those that do have a high biodiversity. The species' population has declined rapidly in recent decades, so a significant reduction in habitat protection would further accelerate its extinction from Estonia.

The first version of the black stork protection plan was prepared by species experts from [eagle conservation society] Kotkaklubi, but the Environmental Board has unilaterally added significant amendments and changes to protection management, amendments which the plan's original authors do not agree with.

The board's plan is to reduce significantly black stork protection in the near future, as currently uninhabited habitats are, in those officials' view, no longer worth preserving. By the end of this decade, protection is planned to be lifted from about 35 habitats and from several dozen more in the following decade — altogether about 40 percent of black stork habitats. The black stork is a critically endangered species whose population has fallen by 4 percent per year in recent decades,¹ and only 30–40 pairs remain in Estonia.

To grasp the scale of this, this means the disappearance or death of four birds out of every hundred each year — one of the most significant declines among forest wildlife. Similar trends are being seen among other forest birds, such as the Ural owl and the Eurasian three-toed woodpecker.

It recently emerged that there are also plans to remove some Ural owl and eagle habitats from protection. Do the Environmental Board and the Ministry of Climate no longer wish to protect species which are critically endangered and are facing extinction in Estonia?

The plan to remove black stork nesting forests from under protection arose in the minds of but a few individual officials who wish to force it through under the current political tailwind. The Environmental Board has seen a rapid staff turnover over the past decade, leading to the partial loss of ecological knowledge and conservation awareness.

In recent decades, the black stork has come to be one of the symbols of nature conservation; its habitats preserved due to its rarity. It is an inhabitant of natural forest, demonstrating that we still have large areas of valuable natural landscapes remaining.

The storks prefer to nest in old natural and primeval forests located far from human settlements and within large natural landscapes (unlike the more familiar white stork – ed.). They choose larger forest sections which have been undisturbed by clear-cutting, as they will not be disturbed during nesting by human activity such as logging, drainage, movement, or quarrying, in such places.

Under the terms of the Nature Conservation Act, a 250-meter radius around a nest is protected; when nests are removed from protection (officially "archived"), that protection evaporates.

Research has shown that at the start of the century, only 0.3 percent of Estonian forests were suitable for black stork nesting  (Lõhmus and Sellis 2003),² since the species builds its nest in very old forests — typically on large trees averaging 120 years old which have strong lateral branches.

According to analysis by officials included in the draft action plan, the Environmental Board claims that at least 1.7 percent of forest land is suitable for the species' nesting. This is still a small area, which furthermore represents the oldest and most biodiverse parts of our forests — areas that should be under protection in any case.

Such forests can be preserved not just as protected areas, but also as key habitat sites; however, they cannot for instance be established on private land if the agency removes stork protection from them.

But to preserve a complete forest area, that the stork truly needs for nesting, a permanent habitat or a nature reserve are the only viable options out there. The black stork is an excellent "umbrella species," under whose wings hundreds of endangered species can live in the same forest; a thorough scientific study on this was recently conducted in Estonia  (Lõhmus et al. 2021).³

The obligation to preserve these types of forests came about in the 2020s, within the framework of the EU biodiversity strategy; all natural and primeval forests which lie on state land should already have been identified and protected. In Estonia, the "preparations" for this have been going on for several years at the Ministry of Climate, but no concrete steps have been taken yet.

The black stork is a flagship species — a conservation goal, used to organize nature protection. There is a strong public expectation that such a rare, attractive, and endangered species would come under protection. There has certainly been no societal pressure in recent decades to remove black stork forests from protection.

On the contrary, the expectation is that preserving endangered species and biodiversity tends towards growth, because our very existence depends directly on the capacity of nature and the persistence of biodiversity.

The agency's counter-argument is that forests of archived stork habitats will continue to be protected for other reasons and by other means, if other conservation values are found there.

This is conceivable in existing protected areas, but about half of all stork nests are located outside these areas. The hope of creating new mini nature reserves there is naïve, since implementing them is getting increasingly difficult for political reasons and tends to stall somewhere in a corridor or on a politician's desk.

At present, stork habitats outside protected areas are safeguarded as permanent habitats, which is possible even if the habitat is uninhabited. A certain degree of dynamism has always been applied in the system of permanent habitat protection.

At the recommendation of species experts, over the past twenty years, more than a hundred old nest sites have been removed from protection (archived), where conditions were no longer suitable for the stork or breeding possibilities had disappeared.

Now the agency wants to transfer this decision-making into an Excel spreadsheet, where the expert's opinion would no longer matter and only the time frame of nest occupation would be decisive, sharply accelerating nest archiving. About half of our storks are no longer pairs but are single individuals, so scarce have stork populations become.

As a result, more and more nests are being left empty. At the same time, storks sometimes return to these habitats, sometimes even 15–20 years later.
However, the Environmental Board plans to "archive" uninhabited habitats already after 10 years.

The black stork also faces other significant threats, such as mortality during migration, the impact of climate change on wintering grounds, or the effects of environmental toxins. The only real actions we can take are here in Estonia — protecting habitats and restoring feeding areas.

Whether it is even worthwhile actively protecting a species heading toward extinction will likely become a daily debate between conservationists and officials in the future.

Human activity increasingly squeezes wildlife and destroys their habitats — for instance, wolves near [livestock] herds, capercaillies near towns, and woodpeckers on clear-cut sites.

But the Environmental Board is starting to consciously erase the black stork's future, justifying this by saying they will protect the nests and forests again once the population starts rising.

Yet after protection is lifted, what remains is usually a clear-cut zone, where old forests suitable for the species can grow back only in 100–150 years' time. The total biodiversity characteristic of primeval forests takes at least 300–500 years to recover in our forests after clear-cut interruption.

The protection of black stork permanent habitats can also be justified by the presence of other species and old forests. This is currently not being applied, although such areas have indeed been established for several species at once — for example, for the white-tailed eagle and the Ural owl.

The continued protection of stork forests as permanent habitats does not hike bureaucracy, since these areas are already protected under the Nature Conservation Act.

Creating new mini nature reserves on the other hand would take thousands of working hours and tens of thousands of euros, which is not rational. To protect the black stork and its nesting forests, we have taken on international obligations, for example under the Birds Directive, which requires us to create specific protected areas for the species.

These are the nature reserves where the species nests or used to nest, and the permanent habitats outside those reserves. Thanks to the black stork alone, about 3,450 hectares are under strict protection in Estonia — these are the permanent habitats designated for stork conservation. This may seem like a large number, but it is only 0.15 percent of all forest land.

Biodiversity there is concentrated many times over, because hundreds of other endangered species live in the stork's forests. Moreover, 79 percent of the stork's habitats lie on state land — forests that belong to you, me, and all of us — so let us let the storks and other wildlife live there undisturbed.

We would need the fingers of just a few people to count out the number of black storks in known nests, and can get a visual ident on most of them. Only about ten pairs attempt to breed each year, and these manage to raise a mere five to 15 young each year. Sadly, this means we are dealing with a species moving rapidly toward extinction, one which may disappear from here entirely within a few decades. And we are talking about a native inhabitant of the European forest zone that has lived side by side with us for thousands of years — likely they were there long before we were.

The black stork is also deeply rooted in our folklore as a bird of omens and the underworld. Will we be left in the future only with the legend of the stork of the underworld?

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1. Väli, Ü., Nellis, R., Kaldma, K., Vainu, O., Sellis, U. 2021. Must-toonekure arvukus, sigimisedukus ja ellujäämus Eestis aastatel 1991–2020. Hirundo: 34 (2), 20−39
2. Lõhmus, A., Sellis, U. 2003. Nest trees – a limiting factor for the the Black Stork (Ciconia nigra) population in Estonia. - Aves, 40(1–4): 84–91.
3. Lõhmus, A.; Runnel, K.; Palo, A.; Leis, M.; Nellis, R.; Rannap, R.; Remm, L.; Rosenvald, R.; Lõhmus, P. (2021). Value of a broken umbrella: abandoned nest sites of the black stork (Ciconia nigra) host rich biodiversity. Biodiversity and Conservation, 30 (12), 3647−3664. DOI: 10.1007/s10531-021-02268-7.

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Leelo Kukk, deputy director general for biodiversity at the Environmental Board, issued the following response to Renno Nellis's opinion piece.

The rigid protection of as many nesting sites as possible, including those unused for decades, will not bring the black stork back to Estonia. Other pressure factors, such as improving feeding grounds, must also be addressed — and these are precisely the issues the new protection plan focuses on.

The black stork certainly requires effective protection, which is why the Environmental Board has undertaken the renewal of the protection action plan. The purpose of drafting, publishing, and discussing the plan is to determine which measures are truly effective for the bird's protection and what should be adjusted.

Nesting sites currently in use will naturally remain protected, and we do not plan to remove protection from uninhabited areas of high conservation value either.

The discussion concerns whether these areas should be protected solely as black stork nesting sites or rather because of other, actually existing natural values.

The new plan has not yet been adopted and is being prepared under the leadership of the Environmental Board in cooperation with multiple stakeholders. The public presentation of that plan, during which any member of the public could make proposals, has just ended,.

Feedback and analysis of the submitted proposals are currently underway, and it was agreed to hold a discussion with the Kotkaklubi next Tuesday.

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