{"id":17221,"date":"2021-06-29T14:54:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T11:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4vultures.org\/?p=17221"},"modified":"2025-05-05T15:47:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T12:47:00","slug":"donna-elvira-and-belarosa-recently-became-the-50th-and-51st-bearded-vultures-reintroduced-in-the-swiss-alps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/4vultures.org\/es\/blog\/donna-elvira-and-belarosa-recently-became-the-50th-and-51st-bearded-vultures-reintroduced-in-the-swiss-alps\/","title":{"rendered":"Donna Elvira and BelArosa recently became the 50th and 51st Bearded Vultures reintroduced in the Swiss Alps"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Donna Elvira \u00a9 Hansruedi Weyrich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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This year marked the\u00a030 year anniversary since the first Bearded Vultures were released into the wild in the Swiss Alps<\/a>, marking the beginning of the successful return of the species in the country as part of the Alpine reintroduction project. Over the weekend, on Sunday 27 June, the region welcomed Donna Elvira and BelArosa, the 50th and 51st Bearded Vultures released in Switzerland! The two young vultures that hatched in captivity moved in the Swiss Wildlife Reserve Huetstock near Melchsee-Frutt where they will spend the next few weeks to gradually adapt to their new life in the wild and help boost the local population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Releasing Donna Elvira and BelArosa<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donna Elvira is a female bird that hatched in the Bearded Vulture captive breeding centre of Guadalent\u00edn<\/a>, which breeds most birds every years and specializes in double adoptions, and is managed by us at the Vulture Conservation Foundation (VCF)<\/a> following an agreement with the Junta de Andaluc\u00eda<\/a>. The second Bearded Vulture named BelArosa is male and hatched in ASTERS<\/a> in France. Both centres are important partners of the Bearded Vulture Captive Breeding Network, coordinated by the VCF on behalf of EAZA<\/a>\u2019s EEP, which breeds the species for conservation purposes. This Network assigned the two vulture to this project according to their genetic background to help increase the still low genetic diversity of the Bearded Vulture population in the Alps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of the release, the team equipped the birds with GPS tags and bleached their feathers for monitoring and identification purposes. Our partners from\u00a0Stiftung Pro Bartgeier<\/a>\u00a0presented the birds to over 300 people who took part in this year’s reintroduction event to witness the release of the young animals, a unique experience that attracts many Bearded Vulture fans from all over Switzerland every year. The group then hiked to the hacking site near Melchsee-Frutt in the Swiss Alps to move the two young vultures to their new home. The VCF and its partners release Bearded Vultures using the ‘hacking method’, which is similar to the natural way of fledging. This method involves releasing chicks that hatched in captivity at an artificial nest in a suitable habitat to acclimatize to the natural environment before they take their first flights. With this technique, the nestlings can associate the place where they are released with the area of hatching so that when they reach breeding age, which is around 8-10 years old, they select these places to breed. When Bearded Vultures are young, they tend to travel vast distances and explore new regions, but once they become sexually mature, they tend to select areas close to where they hatched to breed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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