uildings, railways and rivers than randomly selected survey points. Bustards also occurred within a narrower range of elevations and at locations with significantly less variable terrain. 5. Logistic regression analysis showed that roads, buildings, rivers and terrain all contributed significantly to the difference between occupied and random sites. The Bayesian integrated probability model showed an excellent agreement with the original census data and predicted suitable areas not presently occupied. 6. The great bustard's distribution is highly fragmented and vacant habitat patches may occur for a variety of reasons, including the species' very strong fidelity to traditional sites through conspecific attraction. This may limit recolonization of previously occupied sites. 7. We conclude that AVHRR satellite imagery and GIS data sets have potential to map distributions at large spatial scales and could be applied to other speci