Residents had observed how birds repeatedly flew against a house facade in the west of Leipzig that had only recently been scaffolded. The alarmed experts from NABU Wildvogelhilfe discovered the cause shortly afterward.
« Several nesting sites in the facade were simply closed with construction works, » says Leipzig’s NABU boss Sven Sievert. The bird conservationists climbed onto the scaffolding and tracked down a total of three incubated burrows with an endoscope camera.
« The same drama happens every year, » says Sievert angrily. Birds would simply be walled in alive, although their nesting sites are protected by the Federal Nature Conservation Act.
« But the law is not being enforced – it is left to the builders to report and protect breeding sites on their own responsibility, » criticized the NABU boss. The nature conservation authorities would actually be responsible for such controls.
But in view of the construction boom, Sievert knows that they would only take care of a tiny fraction of the cases.
NABU is therefore calling on the state government to find a regulation that guarantees that species protection will from now on be checked by a professional assessment – in front of the construction work.
