A Frenchman has been campaigning against the extinction of Lesser Lesser Geese since 1999 – with a plane.
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the essentials in brief
- Christian Moullec flies through the air with little geese almost every day.
- The goal: to save the species from extinction.
- So he raises the birds and teaches them their migration route by plane.
Christian Moullec has been flying through the skies of Europe in his ultralight aircraft since 1999. But he does not do this simply for the joy of flying. As absurd as it may sound, the Frenchman flies for bird protection.
It all started around thirty years ago with a newspaper article, the Frenchman tells the YouTube channel “Tom Scott”. It was about the extinction of the Lesser Goose, an animal species that is still threatened in Europe today. The stock was decimated by hunting in the wintering areas around the Black and Caspian Seas, he says.
Moullec teaches birds a migration route
Moullec wants to do something about that. The plan: lead geese to another place where they overwinter. And so he set off with his wife and 33 geese in their luggage. From northern Sweden, the geese followed the pair’s microlight to their wintering grounds in Germany.
“The birds memorized this new route with us. And the following spring, they returned on their own to the reserve from which they had started. So it worked well,” says Moullec.
The couple flies with geese almost every day
But why do the birds actually follow an airplane? This requires one thing above all: a lot of work. “You have to be able to raise young birds,” says Moullec. After hatching, they would consider him and his wife to be parents.
Have you ever saved a bird?
36%
No, it never happened. –
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No, it never happened. –
64%
Yes, these poor animals! –
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Yes, these poor animals! –
Therefore, he spends a lot of time with them, sleeps and swims with the geese. You have to get used to the engine noise and the silhouette of the plane early on so that they really follow it. He flies with them almost every day. Otherwise, their muscles would become too weak for the long migrations from breeding grounds to wintering and back.
To finance the long flights and the rearing, the couple offers tourists to fly with them. But that’s not the only reason why Moullec lets other people join. “It is my duty to convey to the public how important it is to protect these birds,” says Moullec.
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More on the subject:
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