{"id":33082,"date":"2025-01-22T09:47:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T07:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/?p=33082"},"modified":"2025-01-22T09:47:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T07:47:20","slug":"the-most-successful-year-for-the-egyptian-vulture-reinforcement-program-in-bulgaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/the-most-successful-year-for-the-egyptian-vulture-reinforcement-program-in-bulgaria\/","title":{"rendered":"The most successful year for the Egyptian Vulture Reinforcement program in Bulgaria"},"content":{"rendered":"

We celebrated 2024 as the most successful year for the Egyptian Vulture Reinforcement program in Bulgaria. In total 7 Egyptian Vultures released in previous years have returned to the Eastern Rhodopes in 2024. Four of this birds occupied breeding territories in the area \u2013 Zara, Izi, Panteley and Deni.<\/p>\n

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We witnessed the first successful breeding of captive-bred<\/a> Egyptian Vultures in the wild. Izi and her wild partner Lucky successfully raised two fledglings,<\/a> while Zara and her partner produced one chick. The successful breeding of captive-bred vultures in the wild is a major milestone and underlines the importance of the reinforcement program for the recovery of this globally endangered species.<\/p>\n

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In the spring of 2024, six young Egyptian Vultures were released<\/a> in the Eastern Rhodopes \u2013 Nika, Sylva, Adela, Kaloyan, Veli and Electra. The first three are captive-bred and were donated from Prague Zoo<\/a> and Ostrava Zoo<\/a> in the Czech Republic, while the other three birds were rescued from wild nests in 2023 and were raised in the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Breeding Center of Green Balkans<\/a>. The released vultures adapted well to the wild and confidently explored the entire Eastern Rhodopes. Kaloyan flew beyond and reached Romania during his exploratory movements. All of the vultures were able to find food in the wild and socialised well with the wild vultures at the supplementary feeding station nearby. In the autumn, they left the area to embrace one of the biggest challenges in their lives \u2013 the first south migration. Electra and Veli reached the wintering ground in Yemen, while Adela, Sylva and Nika preferred to stay for the winter in the southern parts of Saudi Arabia. The only bird that decided to go to Africa was Kaloyan. However, he followed an extraordinary migration route and travelled 10,000 km (twice as much as usual) between Bulgaria and the wintering grounds. He flew nearly 7000 km over Sahar desert and after crossing Chad, Niger and Nigeria finally settled for the winter in Benin. He is the first Egyptian Vultures from the Balkans that reach Benin.<\/p>\n

Find out more in our Annual report HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Egyptian vulture restocking program is coordinated by the BSPB and implemented in cooperation with the Green Balkans Wildlife Rescue Center and with the support of the European Endangered Species Program (EEP) with coordinator Antonin Vidl. We express our gratitude to Prague Zoo, Ostrava Zoo, Sofia Zoo, Wildlife Rehabilitation and Breeding Center of Green Balkans, Jerez Zoo and Schonbrunn Zoo for their continuous support.<\/em><\/p>\n

The program is implemented under the \u201cFrom Iron curtain to the Green Belt\u201d. The project is funded by the Endangered Landscapes and Seascape Programme (ELSP)<\/a> that is managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative \u2013 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 ELP are supported by Arcadia \u2013 a charitable fund of Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We celebrated 2024 as the most successful year for the Egyptian Vulture Reinforcement program in Bulgaria. In total 7 Egyptian Vultures released in previous years have returned to the Eastern Rhodopes in 2024. Four of this birds occupied breeding territories in the area \u2013 Zara, Izi, Panteley and Deni. We witnessed the first successful breeding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":31818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"class_list":["post-33082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33082"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=33082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}