High-level visit
Land management enables the existence of many grassland plants and animals. Grassland species can not survive on abandoned and overgrown meadows.
Freshly mown meadows are common foraging habitat for animals, especially for birds. We often see white storks, red-backed shrikes, hoopoes, rollers, starlings, yellowhammers, and buzzards.
In a previous research the importance of mown meadows as foraging habitat for rare and endangered hoopoe was already recognized.
For white storks, whose numbers are declining in NE part of Slovenia, mown meadows are also the most common foraging habitat. Researches have shown that hunting efficiency declines with increasing of the vegetation height.
In the project Gorički travniki mowing of the overgrown meadows also attracted some visitors. On Šalovski breg and Čepinci we were delighted to see 3 white storks at the same time.