A new study has discovered that birds that are in the line of extinction might be saved through dropping them off in a long-abandoned habitat. In this way, these endangered birds like eagles could stay away from human activities that could kill them all like habitat loss, poaching, poisoning from farmers and hunters, and electrocution from power lines.
The Spanish imperial eagle used to be the king of the sky in Spain, Portugal, and northern Morocco. However, the once-king of the eagles saw its numbers drop to just 389 breeding pairs two years ago. Saving these Spanish imperial eagles from extinction would be hard so scientists figured out that saving the population of the eagle could be done through dropping them into a long-abandoned habitat.
In an article published in Science Mag, it is already a common approach for bringing species like birds back from the risk of being extinct is through the reintroduction of places they were last known to live. Another example is the sea eagle in Scotland in which was hunted to extinction on the Isle of Skye last 1916. These birds were successfully reintroduced in 1975 to Rum Island near its last known breeding ground.
However, this is not 100 percent full proof. When scientists had an attempted to release the same bird to its former range in Western Ireland last 2007, the newcomers became victims again to the same poisoning that almost killed them a century ago.
"The tendency is to think that the last place that an animal (like birds) was present is the best place for the species, but this isn't always the case," Virginia Morandini said. Morandini is a biologist with the Spanish National Research Council's Doñana Biological Station
According to their study published in Research Gate.net titled "Effects of Territory Quality on Occupancy, Breeding Performance and Breeding Dispersal in Tengmalm's Owl," Morandini and hear colleagues introduced imperial eagles into this territory that they used to inhabit 50 years ago, far from the populations established. The method that they had used had strong theoretical underpinnings due to relic populations that have been pushed into small and low-quality habitats. of these birds.
The result shows that reintroduction could be helpful in recovering endangered populations, especially to birds with wide range expansion. "Taking proactive conservation steps such as habitat protection before a species becomes critically endangered is always going to be the most cost-effective and successful approach," Cornell University ecologist Amanda Rodewald said.
