Record season for Morocco's Northern bald ibises
September 2013. The largest fully wild population of Critically Endangered Northern Bald Ibis has had its second most successful breeding season on record, with the number of breeding pairs at its highest since surveys began in the 1980s. The colonies at Souss-Massa National Park and nearby Tamri, in south-west Morocco, fledged 148 young, bringing the total population at the end of the breeding season to 443 birds.
Two, tiny populations separated by more than 1000 miles
Once widespread in North Africa and Europe, the Northern Bald Ibis survives in two disjunct populations. Well to the east of the Moroccan birds is the semi-captive population at Birecik in Turkey, and south of that a tiny remnant population at Palmyra, Syria. There is also a newly formed population of Northen bald ibis in southern Spain recently created from captive bred birds released into Andalucia.
Wardens
Management and conservation of the Moroccan population is supervised by SEO/BirdLife (BirdLife in Spain) in conjunction with High Commission for Water and Forest and Fight against desertification and GREPOM (BirdLife in Morocco). SEO/BirdLife has hired seven wardens to protect and monitor the colonies, with funding from HSH Prince Albert II of Morocco, the Species Champion, through the BirdLife Preventing Extinctions Programme. The wardens provide daily fresh water for the birds, and prevent disturbance. This year they succeeded in persuading a persistent group of anglers to move away from one sub-colony in the National Park, allowing the ibises to begin nesting.
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