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the fate of the last wild oriental Northern Bald Ibis (1 Viewer)

gserra

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as you may already know, 2015 has been the first year that no oriental N. Bald Ibis (NBI) came back to the Palmyra breeding grounds in Syria – most likely in millennia.

in 2013 and 2014 only one bird, Zenobia, came back to Palmyra on her own to witness a country devastated by the war. the same year of the ibis demise, 2015, the marvelous ruins of Palmyra were blown up by ISIS. please make no mistake: the destiny of the NBI colony was already sealed at the onset of the political unrest in Syria in 2011, as I explained in this article responding to a really superficial and sensationalistic news given by BBC some weeks earlier:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/ne...e_middle_east_but_we_cant_blame_it_on_is.html

starting from 2011 I had to leave Syria and shifted my attention from the endangered birds to the “endangered” companions and brothers that I left behind me – the ibis rangers of Palmyra. since then I have done my best to help them with regular fund raising. also RSPB and BLI have greatly contributed to help the ex Syrian ibis rangers reduced to refugees stranded with their families.

during the same period, I have finished to analyse and publish all the scientific data I had about the last known oriental NBI colony (on top of a popular article published in mongabay.com in 2012). you can find all oriental NBI papers and reports listed on this page: http://www.thelastflight.org/sample-page-2/
and you can download them easily from researchgate.com (or just by emailing me).

I would like here to get your attention to my last effort in the form of a technical-scientific and photographic booklet aimed at documenting the whole NBI 9-year conservation saga in Syria and Ethiopia (2002-2011) titled: The Last Flight of the Ancient Guide of Hajj.

You can download this booklet freely in PDF format at this page: thelastflight.org

as you can imagine I left Syria hearth-broken both for the birds and for the war. I am quite confident that the NBI colony of Palmyra could have been saved if only the successful momentum that was created through hard work and passion during the first 3 breeding seasons (2002-2004) could have been kept alive and supported. instead the opposite happened, unfortunately, due to a deadly cocktail of reasons. lessons learned (and responsibilities) about this quite sad conservation story are quite clear and I can share them with you - should you be interested.

the sixth wave of mass extinctions is on us.

kind regards

gianluca serra
 
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