Northern Bald Ibises in the European Rewilding Network
Newsletter 26/01/2016
Meanwhile, all our birds are in their wintering area WWF Oasi Laguna di Orbetello. As in 2014, the autumn migration was a rather difficult task.
The birds departed from their breeding areas, but most of them remained North of the Alps near the airport of Salzburg. At the end of October we started to translocate small groups from Salzburg for short distances, partly to the valley Zillertal and partly across the Brenner Pass. From there, the birds continued to fly southwards. We assume that these deviations from the ‘classical migration pattern’ in 2014 and 2015 are mainly consequences of the extraordinary mild climate (2014/15 were the warmest years ever measured in the human history).
It is a particular challenge for migratory species like the Northern Bald Ibis, as well as for conservationists, to cope with these incredibly fast and substantial environmental variations. Regarding the reintroduced Northern Bald Ibis population, the challenge isparticularly demanding due to the young migration tradition with only a few experienced migrants. But due to the improved human-led migration technique and a good reproduction success in the wild population we are on the way to build up a larger quantity of experienced migrants.
The Northern Bald Ibis reintroduction project became a part of the European Rewilding Network. The aim of this network is to create an active, living network of rewilding initiatives of major interest throughout Europe. For more information please click here.
Picture: Recently, the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology greatly supported our project by providing a considerable number of solar powered GPS Tags. This was due to an urgent need, because managing and continuously reloading the battery powered trackers of up to 70 free-living birds became more and more difficult.
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