TANAP, the Tatras National Park, has been running live broadcasts of animals in the wild, which have proven to be quite popular.
In winter one of its two cameras broadcast live footage of a feeder used by small songbirds, and another featured a live broadcast of birds of prey, the Pravda daily wrote in mid February.
This winter the TANAP camera caught ravens, hawks, eagles, foxes and wild boars feeding on carcasses which had been left for them by conservationists on the banks of Liptovská Mara, a lake near Liptovský Mikuláš.
The camera was in operation until mid March, as with the beginning of spring, food for birds became available elsewhere, but websites www.spravatanap.sk or www.kukaj.sk are still offering recordings.
“When the snow starts melting... they will find other available food,” Pavol Majko, the director of the TANAP administration, told the daily, adding that it is only possible to carry this out during seasons when food is scarce.
It would be impossible to lure any birds during the summer, but because of the snow during the winter, and because food was less accessible, birds conserved their energy and ate the food that had been set out for them.
The reality nature broadcast has caught the attention of ornithologists from other countries, and people from Brazil, Japan and New Zealand have visited the sites.
After a bad experience when thieves stole a camera from Lomnické Sedlo in the High Tatras which had been providing a live broadcast of marmots and chamois, a new camera was installed and better secured, and survived the winter.
The camera broadcasting the feeder began operating in December and ended its broadcast in mid March.
Conservationists used the broadcast for environmental education in kindergartens and schools. In total, these live broadcasts were viewed by nearly 409,000 visitors.
Later this spring TANAP wants to focus one of its cameras on a nest of storks located on the premises of an elementary school in Liptovský Mikuláš.
“Within one or two weeks the camera will certainly be installed,” Majko told the SITA newswire on March 19. “The first storks will arrive soon from the east.”
Apart from the storks’ nest, the protectionists also plan live broadcasts of a nest of a lesser spotted eagle, which might be, according to Majko, of interest to experts.
They have already selected the nest and the broadcast may be launched in late April.
More than four million people watched live broadcasts via the TANAP websites last year.
