EuroNatur Award 2015

Outstanding commitment for Europe’s migrating birds

On 14 October, Jonathan Franzen received the EuroNatur Award 2015 for his exemplary commitment towards the protection of migrating birds. Among other things, this year´s award winner has significantly contributed to the two-year hunting moratorium which the Albanian government concluded at the beginning of 2014.

In March 2012, Jonathan Franzen went on a journey that included the Balkans to do a comprehensive research concerning the bird hunting issue on behalf of the National Geographic Magazine. According to estimates by EuroNatur, every year several millions of migrating birds fall victim to bird hunt along the narrow coastal strip of the eastern Adriatic coast. The alarming results of this journey were published in his article “Last Song for Migrating Birds” in National Geographic Magazine in 2013. In the article, Jonathan Franzen showed impressively how the bird hunting on the eastern Adriatic coast consequently unravels complex protection programmes in the migrating birds’ breeding areas.

“Jonathan Franzen has significantly contributed to raise international public awareness of the acute threat to European wild birds by legally permitted hunting, poaching and loss of habitat”, Christel Schroeder, President of EuroNatur, justified the choice of this year’s award winner.