{"id":5816,"date":"2018-06-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4vultures.org\/blog\/egyptian-vulture-new-life\/"},"modified":"2018-06-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T00:00:00","slug":"egyptian-vulture-new-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/4vultures.org\/es\/blog\/egyptian-vulture-new-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Egyptian Vulture New LIFE"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Egyptian Vultures New LIFE project is the latest conservation programme for Egyptian vultures in the Balkans from the team behind the award winning Return of the Neophron and is possibly the most ambitious Egyptian vulture conservation initiative undertaken.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Balkan Egyptian vultures.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The globally endangered Egyptian vulture is the only long-distance migrant among the four European vulture species. The core Balkan population in Bulgaria and Greece, with additional pairs in Albania and the Republic of Macedonia, migrates to wintering grounds that largely overlap with resident populations in West Africa, the Sahel, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most European breeding pairs (80 per cent) are concentrated in the Iberian Peninsula. Elsewhere the population is highly fragmented, with about 230 pairs nesting in the Caucasus, but only 80 in the Balkans and less than 10 pairs in the Apennine peninsula (both critically endangered).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus, the Balkan pairs act as a bridge between the Asian and the Iberian populations, and are essential for the conservation status of the species on the whole continent.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian Vulture New LIFE<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Return of the Neophron programme, which ran between 2011 and 2016, successfully undertook urgent conservation actions to prevent the extinction of Egyptian vultures in Bulgaria and Greece. The Egyptian Vulture New LIFE builds on this works and is one of the ever vulture conservation initiatives over the next five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The programme aims to reinforce the vulture population in Europe\u2019s easternmost range by delivering conservation measures that eliminate major known threats such as illegal poisoning and electrocution in the breeding grounds, stabilising this Balkan population will ensure the species survival in its global range. This breeding population will also be reinforced by restocking actions to boost the species recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experimental Egyptian vulture releases\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here at the Vulture Conservation Foundation we are involved in the project\u2019s experiemental release procedure to test release techniques for captive-bred Egyptian vultures from the Egyptain Vulture Captive Breeding Network EEP and measure their survival and migration behaviour. As part of this experiment there will be different release techniques used. Firstly,\u00a0 chicks from the network will be fostered in wild nests and closely monitored by conservation staff from the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, like these chicks born recently in Prague Zoo<\/p>\n