The northern bald ibis is critically endangered, with fewer than 1,000 existing in the wild. But a German group is reintroducing these birds in Europe, where they once thrived, and is using ultralight aircraft to lead them on migrations south toward the Mediterranean.
With its black body and wide wings, the bird flying along Austria’s Salzach Valley on a mild summer day looks, at first glance, a lot like a crow. But when it lands in a nearby meadow, it quickly becomes clear that this is a very different animal.
The bird’s iridescent feathers give it an almost magical appearance. Its long, curved beak enables it to hunt for small animals, and its naked head, with feathers that point straight into the air, Mohawk-style, make it look like no other bird in Europe.
This particular bird even has a name: Liethe. It is a waldrapp, or northern bald ibis, a species that is critically endangered in the wild. In former centuries, the species occurred widely in northern and eastern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, and parts of Europe. The ancient Egyptians revered the northern bald ibis as an afterworld divinity, and its likeness can clearly be seen in hieroglyphs dating back thousands of years.
Today, however, all that’s left of the northern bald ibis is a small population of around 600 wild birds in Morocco, a semi-wild population — dependent on captive breeding — of about 200 individuals in southern Turkey, and perhaps a few individuals in East Africa. A tiny remnant population in Syria, numbering seven individuals, was discovered in 2002. But that population dwindled to a single bird in 2014, and an expert on the northern bald ibis in the Middle East says the bird is now extinct in Syria, with the civil war acting as “the classic straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Today, the northern bald ibis is in such a precarious state that the global zoo population, with 1,600 birds, is larger than the wild one.
Now, however, several northern bald ibis reintroduction projects are underway, which explains why the waldrapp (Geronticus eremita) can once again be seen flying at the northern fringe of the Alps — a habitat it last occupied nearly 400 years ago. Until the 17th century, waldrapps were recorded in parts of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland in and around cities with castles, where they liked to breed. Historical records about where the bird occurred are scant, with the exception of cities like Graz and Salzburg, where waldrapps lived among humans, just as white storks did. Waldrapps showed up in one of Europe’s oldest and most famous illustrated books about native wildlife, the Bird Book, published by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in 1557. A few decades later, records stop. Hunting and a cooling climate are seen as possible causes as to why the bird vanished in Europe at around the time of the Thirty Years War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648.
Today, Liethe is part of one the most ambitious, elaborate, and controversial species reintroduction programs in the world. The population of waldrapps in the project’s German and Austrian branches now numbers 84 captive-bred and reintroduced birds, and conservationists are teaching them to migrate south by leading the birds in ultralight aircraft toward the Mediterranean. While most reintroduction programs aim to help bring back species subjected to relatively recent habitat loss, poaching, or other forms of human depredation, the Waldrapp Project aims to reverse events that took place centuries ago. The initiative’s founders claim it is the world’s first project that aims “to reintroduce a continentally extinct migratory species and to establish a new migration tradition.”
Some prominent zoologists and conservationists are critical of the project’s aggressively interventionist approach.
But some prominent zoologists and conservationists are critical of the project’s aggressively interventionist approach, which combines some of the most hotly debated aspects of modern biodiversity protection: The project concentrates on one species instead of a habitat or ecosystem. It makes heavy use of technology in the form of geo-locators and aircraft. And it focuses on birds that have lived in zoos for a long time.
“It would be much better to focus resources on continuing the upward trend in the Morocco population and doing re-wilding efforts in Turkey, which is part of the historical breeding range,” says Armin Landmann, a zoologist at the University of Innsbruck and a member of the science committee of BirdLife Austria, a leading conservation organization.
The Waldrapp Project was initiated and designed in 2001 by Johannes Fritz, an Austrian behavioral biologist. Fritz first encountered waldrapps in 1997 when he worked at the Konrad Lorenz Research Institute, founded by the world-famous behavioral biologist. There, 10 birds were brought in from the Innsbruck Zoo for a research project. “I didn’t find them particularly interesting at first sight, certainly not beautiful,” Fritz recalls.
Then, those 10 birds vanished overnight. For a few days, they were assumed to be dead, perhaps killed by eagle owls. But it didn’t take long for reports to come in from the north that individual birds or small groups had been sighted. “They took off at the right time of the year, only in the wrong direction,” Fritz says. He attributes this to the peculiar topography of the area around the research institute, which is closed off by sharp mountain cliffs to the south.
Biologist Johannes Fritz [right] and other scientists have used microlight planes to lead reintroduced waldrapps to wintering grounds in Italy. WALDRAPPTEAM / LIFE NORTHERN BALD IBIS
Fritz recalls that the idea to develop what is now a reintroduction program was conceived over arolla pine schnapps and under the influence of a Hollywood movie, “Fly Away Home,” in which a girl helps a flock of Canada geese find their migratory route. Working with animals from the Innsbruck Zoo, Fritz and his team started to breed waldrapps near Burghausen castle in southern Bavaria. At the same time, Fritz completed a flying course. In 2004, he took off with a flock of birds for the first time, using the first of the project’s ultralight aircraft as he led the way for the waldrapps, which were trained to follow him. With considerable media fanfare, the unusual team managed to cover at least a stretch of the ultimate migratory route.
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