Where have Prague's swans been disappearing to?

This spring, dozens of swans that Praguers had grown used to seeing along certain stretches of the Vltava suddenly began vanishing. Some claimed the birds were being caught and sold, or even eaten, until a video surfaced online in January showing a man carrying a swan from the Smíchov embankment straight into the trunk of a car.

Rumors of poaching

Not long ago, dozens of swans — and in winter, hundreds — could be found along certain banks of the Vltava. But in spring 2025, the birds began disappearing from their usual spots. Animal rescuers and police searched for them, and bird flu and other diseases were investigated as possible causes. When no simple explanation turned up, far wilder theories began to spread — that the swans were being caught, sold, or even eaten.

One such theory was publicly pushed by video blogger Robin Čumpelík, who runs the YouTube channel Inovace Republiky. "It looks like someone turned this into a business, and the swans were simply eaten. Someone poached them illegally and either ate them or sold them somewhere," he claimed in a video posted online. Suspicion was most often directed at Ukrainians living in Czechia — although there is no evidence whatsoever that they were behind any mass catching or eating of Prague's swans.

Some birds simply flew away

Karel Makoň, head of the animal rescue station in Plzeň who has worked with swans for more than thirty years, joined the search. "I'm a biologist, not an investigator, so I go by the facts rather than talk about who did what, where and when," he says. Together with police, he surveyed the Vltava from its confluence with the Berounka all the way to Troja, while veterinarians ruled out any disease capable of wiping out the birds on a mass scale.

Ornithological rings provided a crucial clue: thanks to them, animal rescuers discovered that some of the "missing" swans had actually been regularly leaving Prague — using the Vltava mainly as a wintering spot while nesting elsewhere. In autumn, some of them reappeared: ring records showed that some Prague swans had been spotted elsewhere during their absence, for example around Česká Lípa, or along the Elbe near Hradec Králové and Pardubice. "We'd say: that swan that Ukrainians supposedly ate — here it is, it just wasn't around all summer," Makoň recounts.

The man with a swan in his trunk

Still, the mystery wasn't entirely solved — the fate of some disabled swans, no longer able to fly, remained unclear. That's when the video from the Smíchov embankment surfaced, showing a man in rubber boots pulling a swan out of the Vltava and carrying it to a car, ignoring the questions of a passerby who was filming the scene on his phone.

Even though the car's license plate was clearly visible in the footage, police at the time said only that they were searching for the person responsible. People in animal-welfare circles, however, recognized the man as Radim Holovský, a breeder from South Bohemia. Back in 2021, municipal guards had caught him under a railway bridge loading four swans into a car — he claimed at the time that the birds had fishing hooks stuck in their throats, but an X-ray at the rescue station found no hooks at all.

The Czech Environmental Inspectorate confirmed it had dealt with Holovský before: "Administrative proceedings were conducted against this person, resulting in two fine decisions," said inspectorate spokeswoman Miriam Loužecká. One fine of four thousand crowns took effect, while the other was overturned on appeal. During the inspection, officials also found identification rings from Prague's swans in Holovský's possession. Police are still investigating the new case captured on video in January.

A mosaic without a final answer

Did the video of the man carrying off a swan reveal the true reason behind the disappearance of Prague's flocks? According to Makoň — no: one person could not have caused such a dramatic decline in the entire Prague swan population; some birds, based on available data, genuinely flew off in search of better feeding grounds. "In the end, it turned out that everyone has an opinion on this, but hardly anyone actually knows what they're talking about," Makoň concludes bluntly. He says the picture resembles a "huge mosaic" that will need many more pieces before anyone can say for certain why the swans vanished from Prague.

Still, some things are already known: some of the "missing" swans later turned up elsewhere, while others really did disappear because of the man in rubber boots. He himself kept advertising waterfowl online; posing as buyers under a false identity, journalists arranged to meet him again. Police, meanwhile, continue to investigate the January case.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz