Three hermit ibis from Budapest will soon return to the wild

One of the key missions of modern zoos is conservation, protecting endangered species, and, through this, preserving biodiversity, or the diversity of life. We work with many endangered species, some of which are better known, like tigers or gorillas, while others, like the northern bald ibis, are less familiar.

In Hungarian, the northern bald ibis is called tarvarjú, which literally translates to “bald crow”. However, this name can be somewhat misleading. While it’s true that the bird has a bare head without feathers on its crown, it bears no relation to crows. It belongs to the Ibis family, and its closest relative among native bird species is the glossy ibis. It is also possible that the northern bald ibis was once a native species, at least according to Ottó Herman, who believed that such birds may have lived in the Carpathian Basin during the Middle Ages. However, over time, they disappeared not only from here but from almost all European habitats, and the populations in the Middle East and the Maghreb, or northwest Africa, also declined to the point that the northern bald ibis is now on the Red List of endangered species.

The Budapest Zoo has been working with northern bald ibises for over 25 years. Not only do we exhibit them to our visitors, but we have also created conditions for them to breed regularly. The hatching of the chicks is a joy in itself, and each new arrival helps prevent the extinction of the northern bald ibis. Our Zoo is part of a Europe-wide breeding program that coordinates the conservation-focused reproduction of northern bald ibises in zoos. As part of this program, northern bald ibises hatched in our Zoo regularly travel to other partner institutions: for example, just last weekend we sent three northern bald ibises from Budapest to the zoo in Ostrava, Czech Republic. In previous years, we have also sent such birds to Zurich, Plzen, Opole, Amsterdam, and Sharjah (United Arab Emirates).

As part of the conservation work, several reintroduction programs have been launched to reestablish northern bald ibises in habitats where they once lived but have since become extinct. In the past, we sent birds from Budapest to a reintroduction program that started in Austria in 2001, and recently, we participated in the Spanish “Proyecto Eremita” initiative. Launched in 2003, this program has released zoo-born northern bald ibises in Andalusia, where a breeding wild population has since been established. In December 2020, we sent six birds to Spain, followed by another four at the end of 2021, and these birds soon joined their wild counterparts. At the time, we also shared short films about these reintroductions.

A similar reintroduction of northern bald ibises will take place in 2024. For this, three such birds were transferred in mid-January to the zoo in Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia. There, they will wait for their counterparts from other partner zoos, and then they will be placed in a so-called repatriation aviary, which has been built in the field for the purpose of reintroducing them into the wild. After some acclimatization, they will be released into the area where they will meet members of the wild northern bald ibis colony.