BirdLife Hungary is fifty years old
Fifty years ago, on January 6, 1974, the Hungarian Ornithological Society — Magyar Madártani Egyesület (MME) — was founded. In half a century, the two hundred founders have developed into an organization with ten thousand members and forty thousand supporters, thus becoming the most significant nature conservation organization in the eastern part of Europe, MME informed the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) on Saturday.
According to the announcement, in commemoration of its founding, MME, also called BirdLife Hungary, held a meeting reviewing fifty years of ornithological and nature conservation work in Gödöllő, in the Riding Hall of the Royal Castle. The event was opened by the Director General of BirdLife International, Martin Harper, who emphasized the association's role in regional and international nature conservation.
In January 1974, the two hundred founding members, dedicated towards bird conservation, established the MME in the Cave Cinema of the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden. The leaders turned the association into a modern civil organization based on a broad social base and an international model. Later, the activities were expanded to other species groups and general nature conservation issues, and in 1990 the name of the organization was changed to the Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society.
MME was a founding member of BirdLife International in 1993 and has been a key member of the international organization ever since. The members are grouped into thirty regional organizations, covering the entire country with a network of volunteer groups.
Numerous surveys and research programs have been carried out over the past half-century to determine the population changes, distribution, and conservation problems of the different species. The databases of the Bird Ringing Center and the Monitoring Center are internationally outstanding, they store tens of millions of data records, and the results are available to everyone on the Internet in addition to the large summary works.
The saker falcon, which was chosen as the bird of the jubilee year, clearly illustrates the history of the Society. By the mid-seventies, the species was on the brink of extinction, so the volunteers and leaders of MME made serious efforts to save it. Thanks to these, the number of saker falcons has now reached 180-200 pairs, and the Hungarian population is the most reliable in the entire Eurasian range of the species. In addition to predators, BirdLife Hungary's announcement also highlighted the conservation programs aimed at the great bustard, the white stork, the black stork, the European roller, the European bee-eater, and the barn owl, as flagship species.
Source: MTI (Hungarian News Agency)
Image source: MME
