The Pro Bearded Vulture Foundation released the 95-day-old female Donna Elvira and the 93-day-old male Delarosa in the federal wildlife sanctuary of Huetstock. The young birds have not yet fledged. Your new temporary home is an approximately 20 meter wide niche under a rock ledge around 2000 meters above sea level.
Around 300 people took part in the release into the wild. There are two cheeky young bearded vultures, said Daniel Hegglin, managing director of the Pro Bearded Vulture Foundation, opposite the Keystone-SDA news agency. They would have immediately started exploring the niche despite the busy day.
Both young birds were raised in a breeding station in Spain. The male had hatched in a French breeding station. Because its parents, who had children for the first time, were overwhelmed, the chick was given to adoptive parents in Spain. Before they were released into the wild, the Goldau SZ zoo offered the young birds a temporary home.
The bearded vultures are monitored in their first week in the wild. The carrion collected by the gamekeeper is thrown to them as food. Bearded vultures begin to fly between 110 to 130 days of age. It should take two to four weeks for Donna Elvira and Delarosa to make their first flight attempts, said Hegglin.
Despite the surveillance, the two released birds are left to fend for themselves. Life in nature is not without its dangers for them: In 2017, a young bearded vulture released from the Huetstock was hit by a gust and fell to its death.
The bearded vulture, which mainly feeds on the bones of dead ungulates, has long been unjustly denounced as a lamb thief. In 1913 the “lamb vulture” was wiped out in Switzerland and in the entire Alpine region.
The resettlement started in Austria in 1986. There were also releases in France and Italy. The resettlement of the bird, whose head is adorned with a dark, bristly beard, began 30 years ago in Switzerland with the first reintroduction into the national park in the canton of Graubünden.
In the meantime, 300 of the imposing animals with a wingspan of up to 2.9 meters are likely to live in the Alps again. However, the genetic diversity of the population is low. For this reason, animals from rare genetic lines have been released into the wild at Huetstock in the canton of Obwalden since 2015.
When they have offspring, Donna Elvira and Delarosa will also contribute to the genetic diversity of the local Bearded Vulture population. Her ancestors came from Asia and Greece, said Hegglin.
However, it will be a few years before the released vultures have offspring. These birds do not reach sexual maturity until they are five to seven years old.