After more than two years of attempts, the Israeli nature authorities reported Monday they were able to finally import a lappet-faced vulture from the United Kingdom to breed with local birds of the same species in an attempt to revive the population.
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) said the 11-year-old male arrived in Israel last Thursday, and is being acclimated at the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem.
The lappet-faced vulture was held in a birds of prey facility in Britain that was closed, and a British organization approached the Nature and Parks Authority and offered to transfer the male to Israel.
But, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic the process was suspended.
In addition, an outbreak of violent bird flu delayed the bird's arrival even further. "It took a while for him to get here," said Dr. Ohad Hatzofe the avian ecologist of the INPA.
The lappet-faced vulture is endangered worldwide and its population decreased in all of its habitation areas.
The world's lappet-faced population is estimated at 6,530 adult individuals and its presence throughout Africa and the Middle East is shrinking further due to poisoning and harm by humans, and is dropping at a rate of 3.5% each year.
In the past, the lappet-faced vulture nested all around the desert regions of the Middle East, including Israel. But nowadays, only a small population of several hundred pairs remains, and this is probably an excessive estimate. In Israel, the species was extinct in 1989.
The INPA established a breeding core in Israel's Negev, and last April, a chick was born, for the first time since 1994. "We hope to add another pair of the lappet-faced vulture," Dr. Hatzofe said. "We hope it is only the beginning of a very long-term effort to restore the species, which in recent years has been disappearing so much so that it was classified as endangered in the world."