In order to establish a new migratory pattern, Fritz wasn’t able to build on any known overwintering sites south of the Alps due to a lack of knowledge about the life history of the northern bald ibis in Europe. Instead of traditional sites, his goal was to find an area suitable for today’s birds. In cooperation with WWF, the team picked a nature reserve in Tuscany, Oasi Laguna di Orbetello. This was the destination of the first successful human-led waldrapp migrations, as the birds were primed to migrate on their own to a safe refuge for the winter.
It took years of training to get the first flock of waldrapps across the Alps successfully. In 2011, the first bird migrated on its own to Tuscany. The bird, called Goja, even returned to Burghausen the following spring. “This was our proof of concept,” Fritz recalls. But in the fall of 2012, an Italian hunter shot Goja and one of its offspring. Despite this killing, the new migration pattern Fritz wanted to establish began to work for other birds. Since 2010, another four human-assisted trips took place, and the number of birds doing round-trip migrations between Germany and Tuscany has increased from 16 in 2014 to 29 this year.
The goal is to achieve a self-sustaining population of about 500 birds, with a breeding range extending into Switzerland.
This success has encouraged Fritz to start a third flock of waldrapps at Lake Constance, consisting of 32 juvenile birds. Fritz and his team are in the midst of preparing this 620-mile journey, which will take place in a half-dozen flight stages and is expected to last 15 to 20 days.
The number of waldrapps in Germany and Austria has nearly doubled from 43 in 2014 to 84 in 2018. Last month, Fritz handed in a second application for EU funds to extend the project until 2027. The goal is to achieve a self-sustaining population of about 500 animals, with a breeding range extending into Switzerland.
In Syria, the fate of the northern bald ibis has headed in the opposite direction. An Italian naturalist, Gianlucca Serra, lived and worked in Syria from 2000 to 2011, and led the effort that rediscovered the relict population of the bird in the desert steppe near the ancient city of Palmyra in 2002. Of the seven birds rediscovered then, one tagged bird was shot in northern Saudi Arabia in 2009, according to Serra. Three of the Palmyra northern bald ibises were seen at a wintering site in Ethiopia in 2013-2014. One of those birds, named Zenobia, returned to Palmyra in the spring of 2014. But as far as Serra can tell — he fled Syria in 2011 because of the civil war — 2014 was the last year Zenobia migrated back to Syria, signaling the extinction of the species in that country.
Just how little the Waldrapp Project has to do with classical nature protection becomes tangible at the two breeding sites near Kuchl and in the Bavarian town of Burghausen, 25 miles north of Salzburg. In Kuchl, the caves that the birds use for hatching their offspring have been modeled by an architect. They look like straight out of a Flintstone movie and have been attached to a cliff by construction workers. In Burghausen, which is home to the longest castle in the world, waldrapps live and breed on wooden shelves attached to an ancient wall. In both sites, field managers call individual birds by their names.
Daniela Trobe, field manager of the Waldrapp Project, is in charge of making sure that the 13 adult birds that live in the small Kuchl colony will successfully raise their offspring — 14 young birds this year —over the summer. During breeding and hatching time, half of the group is taking care of the young ones, while the other half forages for insects, worms, mice, and other small animals in the meadows surrounding nearby farms. With the help of her smartphone, it only takes her minutes to locate the group, thanks to the geo-locators Liethe and the other birds carry on their backs like rucksacks. A local farmer shows Trobe the way to a meadow at the edge of a village. “We quite like to have these birds around us,“ the farmer says.
But the project’s critics are not won over by the inherent appeal of the Waldrapp Project. The strongest detractor is Landmann, the University of Innsbruck zoologist. In a series of publications, Landmann has claimed that the Waldrapp Project isn’t based on sound science, doesn’t effectively promote the conservation of the species, and isn’t worth the more than 1.5 million euros in European Union funding spent so far on reintroducing the bird.
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