Newsroom
Protecting Cyprus’ wildlife sometimes means leaving the comfort of an office, putting on a harness, and hanging from the side of a cliff with a baby vulture in your hands.
That was the delicate task facing a conservation team in the Limnatis Valley, where another young griffon vulture has been fitted with a GPS transmitter ahead of its first flight from the nest.
Because the nest was perched on a cliff, a professional climber helped members of the Game and Fauna Service and BirdLife Cyprus reach the chick, attach the lightweight tracker, and return it safely home.
The bird is very much a Cyprus baby, hatched in the Limnatis Valley around mid-May, although both its parents were brought to the island from Spain as part of efforts to rebuild the country’s tiny Griffon population.
The GPS device will allow conservationists to follow the young bird’s first journeys, see where it feeds, and step in if it runs into difficulty.
That close watch is particularly important during the first two or three months after a chick leaves the nest. Like most youngsters leaving home, it must learn where to find food, how to avoid danger, and how to fit in with the wider group; only this one will be doing it several hundred meters above the ground.
The operation was supported by the Spanish Embassy in Cyprus, continuing the partnership that helped bring the chick’s parents to the island.
This year has brought encouraging news for a species that has struggled to survive in Cyprus. Three Griffon pairs have bred successfully for the first time since 2021, showing that the long hours, international cooperation, and occasional cliff-hanging are beginning to pay off.
The Limnatis birth carries extra significance. It is the first recorded Griffon breeding in the protected valley in 16 years. Vultures continued to use the area as a resting place, but no successful breeding had been recorded there since 2010.
Their return shows why protecting old nesting grounds remains important, even when the birds appear to have abandoned them. Nature, it seems, sometimes keeps an old address in mind.
For now, the Cyprus-born chick remains in its nest, watched over by its Spanish parents and a dedicated local conservation team. When it finally spreads its wings, its first solo journey will not go unnoticed.
*Source: Birdlife Cyprus
