| Description |
The day I arrived in Ethiopia, researcher Yilma Dellelegn Abebe of the Ethiopia Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS) was just leaving the capital city, Addis Ababa, to search for three Northern Bald Ibises in a remote, roadless area of the country. These critically endangered birds had been satellite-tagged earlier in Syria by a team of researchers from Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), BirdLife Middle East, and Cambridge University. According to the satellite signals, they had crossed into Ethiopia the previous month and were frequenting an area only some 80 kilometers to the northeast of us. Also known as the Walldrap, the Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita) was once common in the Mediterranean area, but the birds now stand in imminent danger of extinction, with fewer than 300 individuals existing in the wild. Until 2002, the only known populations were in Morocco and Turkey, and these birds were nonmigratory. |
