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Austria/Italy: Monitoring Migration

Conservation at a Glance

• The Northern bald ibis is a medium sized Afro-Eurasian bird that is a critically endangered species currently only found in Morocco, Turkey and Syria. They have been extinct from their European range for over three hundred years
• This species spends most of its time around rocky deserts and is currently breeding primarily in the Middle East and the supra Saharan countries, mainly in Morocco, with the largest wild colony made up of approximately 250 birds.
• The Zoo supports a conservation program that has been reintroducing ibis to their historic European range in Austria and Italy since 2002.
• The conservation program mainly focuses on discovering the migratory paths of the ibis and on training human-raised birds to migrate to safe mating areas.
  • Monitoring is done through cameras and also through radio trackers attached to the young birds.
  • The young ibis are trained to follow a small plane in order to learn its migration route.
  • One of the Zoo’s bird keepers spent a month in Austria and Italy in 2007 assisting with training young ibis to migrate.