Conservationists Give Avram The Bird

Animal rights groups are threatening legal action if Marcel Avram doesn’t move the date of his May 22 AC/DC show at Wels Airport in Austria.

Avram, who is doing the show in partnership with German Medusa Group promoters Marek Lieberberg and Dieter Semmelmann, played down the fuss, telling Pollstar the matter will soon be sorted.

“In regards to the local newspaper stories, nobody will take legal action. We are working very close with the city authorities who invited us to play the show at Wels,” he said. “We hope everything will be clarified in a positive way within the next two weeks.”

The “Flugplatz,” as it’s referred to on the Aussie rockers’ tour itinerary, is home to thousands of curlews, a rare bird.

Conservationists fear the band’s high-voltage renderings of “Highway To Hell” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” and the 80,000 fans who snapped up tickets will disturb the curlews during their nesting season.

“The second biggest colony of curlews in Upper Austria and various other ground-nesting birds must not become endangered,” Hans Uhl of BirdLife told the UK’s Daily Telegraph.

The BirdLife spokesman said his organisation, along with the Upper Austrian Nature Protection Union and the province’s World Wildlife Fund (WWF) office, are trying to convince officials to reschedule the concert.

Uhl said the gig would cause a “disaster” among the breeding colonies that flock to the area each spring.

He also hit out at Social Democratic Mayor Peter Koits for not consulting environment experts and conservationist organisations when the date was arranged. He said he and his colleagues felt they had been “mocked” as the concert has been arranged to take place on the same day as the International Day of Diversity of Species.

WWF spokesman Bernhard Kohler meanwhile claimed the matter was not just an Upper Austrian issue and called on Federal People’s Party environment minister Nikolaus Berlakovich to take action.

The campaigners said the concert could take place anytime from mid-June, as the breeding season will have ended and it would no longer be a threat to the birds.

Tickets for the event – which sees the group return to Austria after playing to a sold-out crowd at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium last May – sold out within hours of going on sale in December.