The Mantas in Madeira

The involved volunteers in the second campaign of quantification and study of habitats of the existing Mantas in Madeira are about 40, an initiative of the regional delegation of the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds - SPEA (http://www.spea.pt). After the quantification of specimens, in one second phase, the analysis of the evolution of the population of these birds of prey will be followed.
Isabel Fagundes, responsible for the SPEA in Madeira, explained to Diário de Notícias that the inventory of the number of Mantas is made through registration cards, where the volunteers register the birds that they watch (by foot, bicycle or car) on areas previously marked. All the collected data is later treated statistically, in order to estimate which is the existing population of Mantas in the whole island. This project comes to fill the lack of studies related with the evolution of the population of this species in the region.

Source: Diário de Notícias – March 18, 2007