Northern bald ibis 935


FIG. 1 Former and recent distribution, projects sites and zoo colonies of the northern bald ibis Geronticus eremita. Data from Collar & Stuart (1985), Welch & Welch (2004) and Böhm et al. (2018).


Japan and North America, and those used in European re- lease projects, derive from western origin birds (Böhm, 1999, 2006), whereas the Turkish semi-wild birds are of local, east- ern origin. Thus, although more work is needed, the two populations can be regarded as distinct management units.


Western subpopulations


Morocco Historically, breeding colonies occurred in the High and Middle Atlas Mountains and some Atlantic coastal areas north of the present colonies. The number of populations declined from 38 sites in 1940 to 15 in 1975 and only three in 1989, as a result of habitat modification, human distur- bance, hunting and pesticide use (Collar & Stuart, 1985). Thevenot et al. (2003) documented a higher number of historical colonies because they treated some dispersed colonies as separate entities. Historical records suggest that the now extinct inland populations were migratory, wintering further south in Morocco and as far away as Mauritania and Mali (Bowden, 2015).


The remaining global wild population now occupies a


small coastal strip in southern Morocco in the region of Agadir, where it breeds on sea cliffs in two main areas and is resident year-round. In 1991 the Moroccan authorities designated the Parc National de Souss-Massa, a 33,800 ha coastal protected area specifically delimited to protect the nesting and feeding areas of the northern bald ibis south of Agadir. The other main breeding and feeding area is a coastal strip 50 km north of Agadir in the region of Tamri, a no-hunting area designated as a Site d’Interêt Bio- logique et Ecologique, but with no formal protection status. By 1995 a total population of c. 300 birds was breeding in three subcolonies within the Parc National de Souss- Massa, and in one colony at Tamri (Bowden, 1998). There is some movement between these sites, which are c. 100 km apart (Bowden et al., 2003; El Bekkay et al., 2007). A project, started in 1993 as a collaboration between the


Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Sociedad Española de Ornitología, and later Groupe de Recherche pour la Protection des Oiseaux au Maroc, working with Parc National de Souss-Massa, aims to increase the nor- thern bald ibis population in Souss-Massa. Local fishers were hired and trained as wardens, and a range of local


Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 934–946 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000198


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