28 MAY 2018 - 05:30 LESLEY
STONES
If reincarnation is a thing, one
of the worst life forms in which to return must be the chick in the second egg
laid by a southern ground hornbill. The second hatchling can expect utter
neglect from its parents to the point where it dehydrates and dies.
Worse, the mother might eat it.
It will only survive if the elder sibling is weak and weedy and is abandoned.
Not surprisingly, the large, ungainly and extremely noisy birds are flapping
towards extinction.
"There are an estimated
2,000 birds left in SA in 400 to 500 breeding groups and if we don’t do
something about it we are going to lose them altogether," says Dr Lucy
Kemp, manager of the Mabula Ground Hornbill Project. "With 60% of their
land and 50% of the population lost in the last 30 years, it’s probably the
swiftest-declining bird species in SA."
The project is based in Mabula
Private Game Reserve near Bela-Bela in Limpopo. Since it was founded in 1999 it
has been experimenting with hand-rearing abandoned chicks and releasing them
into the wild to rebuild the population.
It’s a tricky task. They are
rescued from nests before they die and thrive on a diet of chopped-up mice. But
their human rescuers can’t teach them how to be birds.
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