Hel, an Ibis Eremita born in Austria, landed in Cádiz in October 2023 along with another 34 companions after a journey of more than 40 days in which they were guided by an ultralight with a yellow paragliding. They followed those who had raised them and who intend to teach them the route, create a natural connection between Spain and Austria, and return to their place of origin. Hel can no longer try because he was found dead in a shot in November last year in a social hunting ground in Fregenal de la Sierra, in Extremadura, according to Ecologists in action on Tuesday. He was a year and a half youth. The events occurred during a hunting day, so environmentalists ask that the suspension of hunting activity be decreed in the preserve “given the seriousness of the facts.” The species is cataloged in danger of extinction. “After all the effort, of both human and economic resources invested to carry out these animals, of the emotional involvement of their breeders with them, this happens,” says Miguel Ángel Quevedo, veterinarian and responsible for the reintroduction project of the species in Cádiz of the Zoobotanic of Jerez, which develops with the Junta de Andalucía. Normally they move much, but some move away 50, 100, 200 kilometers, even one has settled in Galicia. Hel, Quevedo continues, was one of those explorers, who approached Badajoz, “and he had the bad luck that a braw They have ever migrated, to undertake such a trip. The preparation begins before, in the aviary in which they leave the shell in Austria. Helena Wehner and Barbara Steininger were their “adoptive mothers”, which fed them yellow dressed, the color of the paragliding, from the first moment, and thus, with patience, it was achieved that the 35 copies follow them in migration. They went from co-pilot in the ultralight, led by Johannes Fritz, director of the Life-Nbi project of the European Union. After these 35 copies, another 36 arrived last year in the same way. The trip is made in stages with land support and resting as an aerodrome in airfield with the animals that are radiomarcados, which allowed the agents of the natural environment of Extremadura to locate the body of Hel. “They adapt well here, but we must bear in mind that in this species as in others youth mortality can reach 50%, and the first group in which Hel arrived we have 15 left, so his death by a shot is a disaster,” says Quevedo. Those who received in 2024 have had less low and for now they have only died “about five or six.” As they grow they move away less and the dangers are lower. Its greatest enemy are the electric lines in which they can be electrocuting, as with other birds. Once they land in Cádiz, the birds remain a couple of months in the San Ambrose Aviary – Lugar of acclimatization and loose of Ibis Eremitas between Vejer and Barbate. Those of the colony of Cádiz who live in freedom “are very curious, approach the aviary and even sleep on top of it and thus a link is established and when we open the doors in December those of Central Europe are integrated into the group,” describes Quevedo. In Spain the Ibis Eremita has been recovered for 20 years within the Eremita project, when the reintroduction program was launched. At present, they have a population “close to stability” with more than 300 copies and 39 reproductive couples, says Juan Antonio Martín, head of the Natural Environment Service of the Junta de Andalucía in Cádiz. This year they have about 48 reproductive couples, which means that more chickens will come out. Jorge Orueta, technician of the unit of SEO/BirdLife spaces and species, explains that the species disappeared from Europe about three centuries ago and that it has now managed to leave the category of critical danger of extinction due to conservation efforts in Morocco, where the only wild population remained. There, about 180 couples have been achieved since the 48 that existed in 1992.
