The Super Whooper project is supported by the Lough Neagh Partnership and partly financed by the European Union via the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (NI) through the Programme for Building Sustainable Prosperity. It is a multi-disciplinary project encompassing education and outreach combined with scientific research to highlight the importance of these wetlands for Whooper Swans. It will highlight the importance of wetlands such as Lough Neagh in socio-economic terms in addition to being crucial in global flyways for migratory waterbirds.
Through funding secured by the Irish Whooper Swan Study Group, a range of other bodies have contributed significantly to this project: they include the borough councils whose administrative areas encompass the Lough Neagh Wetlands: Craigavon Borough Council, Cookstown District Council, Lisburn City Council, Antrim Borough Council, Ballymena Borough Council, Magherafelt District Council, and Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council. These contributions have come via Landfill Tax Credit Schemes operated by Ulster Wildlife Trust/ENTRUST Ltd., and Better Belfast.
Additional funding has been kindly given by DoE Environment & Heritage Service, The Heritage Council, Northern Ireland Electricity plc./Veridian Group and Ulster Bank Limited.
The programme of work could not be completed without our important relationships with individual scientists, educators and organisations in the UK, Iceland, Ireland and elsewhere.
These include Fuglavernd (Icelandic Society for the Protection of Birds), the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, the African Eurasian Waterbird Agreement Secretariat (Bonn), National Parks & Wildlife Service, Seamus Burns, Dr Oli Einarsson, Sverrir Thorstensen, Martin McGill, Richard Hesketh, Ben Wolf, Jim Russell, Graham McElwaine, Gerry Murphy, Kendrew Colhoun, Aevar Petersen, Gudmundur Gudmundsson and Anna Gudmundsdottir.
