SmartBirds
The BSPB team recorded the first successful breeding in the wild in Bulgaria of Egyptian Vultures raised in captivity and released in the frame of the species’ restocking programme. This is an important milestone in the species’ recovery in the Balkans!
The young pair is formed by Izi, a captive-bred Egyptian vulture released in the wild in 2020, and Lucky, a wild male who was captured and tagged with a GPS transmitter as an immature bird. They formed a pair and occupied a breeding territory in 2022, but only now have they managed to successfully breed and hatch not one but two chicks!
Izi was born and raised in the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Breeding Center of Green Balkans in 2019 and released in the wild through the delayed release method by the BSPB team in 2020. In the past five years, Izi has travelled thousands of kilometres between the wintering grounds in Sudan and its new breeding territory in the heart of the Eastern Rhodopes, Bulgaria. The young parents are very dedicated and caring to their two chicks, which grow fast day by day and will hopefully flee from the nest in August.
The Egyptian Vulture reinforcement program started in Bulgaria in 2018, and so far, 5 captive-bred individuals released in the wild have reached maturity and formed pairs. Izi’s sister Zara is also incubating an egg, and soon, we will find out whether she also hatched a chick in the wild. The Egyptian Vulture Reinforcement programme in Bulgaria is implemented by BSPB, Green Balkans, Prague Zoo, and EAZA.
The Restocking programme was established in the frame of the Egyptian Vulture New LIFE project (LIFE16 NAT/BG/000874) funded by the EC and is currently implemented under the “From Iron Curtain to Green Belt: restoring ecological networks in Southeast Bulgaria” project, funded by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme (ELSP) that is managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative – a collaboration between the Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge of The Old Schools and leading internationally-focused biodiversity conservation organisations. The University and the ELSP are supported by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing.
