SmartBirds
A new Egyptian vulture pair has been recorded in the Eastern Rhodopes – an encouraging moment for the conservation of this globally endangered species. The female of the newly formed pair is already well known to our team. Her name is Elizabeth, and like Sifera, she is part of the Class of 2022 at our “Egyptian Vulture School”, which is designed to support the recovery of the species’ population in Bulgaria.
With this new pair, the number of occupied breeding territories of the Egyptian vulture in Bulgaria this year has reached 36, of which 29 are located in the Eastern Rhodopes. This marks a slight increase from last year’s total, with one more occupied territory confirmed by our team.
Волен Аркумарев
Elizabeth was hatched at and was donated by Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria. The male of the pair is an unmarked wild bird. Since her release into the wild, our team has been closely monitoring Elizabeth via a GPS transmitter, which has enabled us to follow her remarkable journey across continents.
Thanks to this technology, we tracked Elizabeth’s migration across Africa, her first successful return to Bulgaria last year to the area of her release, and now her second return, this time having found a partner. The young pair demonstrate clear territorial behaviour, although they have not yet built a nest – a typical behaviour for birds of their age.
Волен Аркумарев
The new territory is located just 12 km from the supplementary feeding site where Elizabeth was released. It borders the territory of Zara (Class of 2020), who has now been breeding successfully for a second consecutive year.
After more than three decades of dramatic decline and near extinction of the Egyptian Vulture population in Bulgaria, we are witnessing a reversal of this negative trend for the first time in recent years. One of the key contributors to this conservation success has been the Egyptian vulture restocking programme, launched in 2018. To date, seven released Egyptian Vultures have successfully formed breeding pairs in the wild.
This programme is implemented by the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB) in partnership with Green Balkans and the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP) of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), coordinated by Antonín Vaidl of Prague Zoo.
Conservation efforts are carried out within the framework of the project “The Green Belt of Southeastern Bulgaria”, funded by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme (ELSP), which is managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative – a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and leading international conservation organisations. Both the University and ELSP are supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.
