In the International Children’s Day we also received a gift - three Griffon Vultures, granted by Wilhlema Zoo in Stuttgart.

In the early hours of June 1st, a team of the Vultures Back to LIFE14 NAT/BG/649 Project welcomed in Stara Zagora a crew sent from Wilhlema Zoo, carrying very interesting passengers - three young Griffon Vultures, hatched in the zoo. We know for a fact that two of the birds are males, while the third bird was sampled upon arriving. One of the vultures was immediately called Balakov, after a Bulgarian football player, one of the best halves in Bulgaria, who played for the Stuttgart football team, our colleagues turned out to be supporters of. The second one was called Willy, after Wilhlema Zoo, while the third one will have to wait for its sex to be determined to get a name.

The vultures were examined by our vets and tagged with yellow wing tags K2U, K6P and K7N, which would later help us identify them on field. They are currently accommodated at the Wildlife Rescue Centre of Green Balkans in Stara Zagora for a short quarantine and will be later moved to the vulture adaptation aviaries in the Balkan Mountains.
The three vultures were hatched by parents, kept in the zoo. Fortunately our colleagues form Wilhlema have decided that there is no point in keeping young healthy birds, which deserve a chance to live free and thus help the conservation of their species into the wild. Since there are no Griffons in Germany, our colleagues decided to entrust their birds to us.
These are not the first vultures, received from Wilhlema Zoo. In May 2014 we got three other birds - Rila, Pirin and Buli. From them only Pirin (tagged K8M) has been released from the Sliven aviary, while Rila and Buli are still in the cage, learning from the others to act like “wild vultures”.

Our colleagues - Mr. Sascha Royla and Mr. Pascal Herzog ho drove the vultures all the way from Germany to Bulgaria, will stay here until Friday, and will visit the Sliven aviary, as well as the newly formed Griffon Vulture colony in the Eastern Balkan Mountains.

We are very happy to work with Wilhlema Zoo and we would like to cordially thank them for their trust! We hope that the German birds would successfully adapt here and thus contribute to “Vultures back to LIFE”!

For more information, please contact:
Elena Kmetova – project coordinator;
e-mail: ekmetova@greenbalkans.org; phone: + 359 885 219 557