Between 2011 and 2017, a dedicated conservation programme registered as LIFE11 NAT/PL/428 worked to protect the western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) across two regions of Poland: Bory Dolnośląskie in the southwest and Puszcza Augustowska in the northeast. This page summarises the programme in English, consolidating material that originally existed as two separate documents on this domain.
The rest of this site is written in Polish, reflecting where the real, ongoing reader interest in this material actually sits today. This page exists specifically because two historic English-language documents once carried real, independent value: an official English-language brochure describing the programme, and the English track of the international conference that closed it in 2017.
Programme structure
The programme was organised into structured groups of action, run in parallel across both regions. Preparatory work included establishing project offices, acquiring off-road vehicles for fieldwork, securing the necessary permits, and assessing habitat quality using the HSI method across four capercaillie refuges in Bory Dolnośląskie.
Population reinforcement
The core protective actions centred on population reinforcement. Birds were sourced from two origins, domestic captive breeding and wild individuals caught in Belarus, with every released bird undergoing genetic testing to manage genetic diversity in the recovering population and avoid excessive relatedness between generations.
Before release, adaptation enclosures were prepared in both regions, allowing newly introduced birds to acclimatise gradually before being set fully free. Once released, birds were supplementary fed for a period, and the enclosures themselves were regularly monitored and maintained by programme staff.
Habitat restoration
Habitat work formed a large part of the programme's practical effort. This included thinning dense undergrowth to improve mobility and visibility for the birds, pruning bilberry shrubs to increase fruit yield, and, in Bory Dolnośląskie specifically, the targeted placement of gastroliths: small stones capercaillie need to swallow in order to digest tough winter food, particularly pine needles.
An invasive shrub, hard-hair spirea, was removed from parts of Bory Dolnośląskie and replaced with bog bilberry plantings to restore the natural understorey composition. Predator numbers were also actively reduced in both regions, since reintroduction efforts have limited chances of success without addressing predation pressure directly.
Water conditions in Bory Dolnośląskie were improved through small retention structures, aiming to restore wetter ground conditions closer to those the species would have encountered before decades of forest drainage for timber production. A separate set of actions addressed human disturbance near lek sites during the sensitive spring breeding season.
Monitoring
Monitoring ran throughout the programme using both telemetry and traditional field observation, tracking released birds across both regions to measure whether the habitat and population work was translating into real gains in survival and breeding success.
The 2017 closing conference
The programme concluded formally with an international conference held at Kliczków Castle in Lower Silesia from 6 to 8 September 2017, titled "Biology, ecology and protection of Galliformes in Poland and Europe." The conference brought together foresters, hunters, scientists, and conservation NGOs from Poland and abroad, across five thematic paper sessions plus a poster session and a field visit to the project area itself.
Contact with the wider international research community continued well beyond the programme's formal end in 2017. Updates about subsequent editions of the International Grouse Symposium, an event patronised by the IUCN Species Survival Commission, still appeared on the original project website as late as 2022.
Neither the original English brochure nor the conference's English-language pages survive in a form that can be fully restored verbatim. This page presents the real, underlying facts of the programme and its closing conference, gathered carefully from what could still be recovered of the archived project materials, rather than a literal reproduction of either lost original document.