Until this year, the bird, also known as the black eagle, has returned over the Rhodope Mountains, which stretch across southeastern Europe along the southern border of Bulgaria and northeastern Greece.
The restocking is due to a restocking project where 17 birds have already been flown out of Spain and are temporarily housed in a large purpose-built bird net until they are released, and will hopefully help return the species to the area. Vultures are a major species in the mountain ecosystem and the focus of their diet is on young, dead animals. This species of bird quickly removes and recycles carcasses of dead animals, helping to stop the spread of diseases such as anthrax and rabies.
The wingspan of huge birds can reach more than 3 meters and weigh more than 14 kilograms. The Rhodope Mountains would provide an ideal habitat for species that were previously extinct in part due to hunting.
Environmentalists are not resting
Recreating the vultures would fill in the gaps in the birds’ historical range, meaning that populations would stretch from Asia and the Middle East to Spain and Portugal. The number of European vultures is divided into two parts: an isolated group in the West and an isolated group in the Balkans, he writes. does not depend on.
In the worst period, there were 200 pairs in Spain. All other European populations are extinct, except for a small colony in Greece, where about 25-30 pairs live. From a historical low point in the 1970s, vultures have made a gradual recovery thanks to intense conservation efforts. In Spain, more than 2,500 couples are now spending, and this population has become the source of successful resettlement in the Pyrenees and Sevins in south-central France and the French Alps.
