The effort to save Syria’s northern bald ibis population failed, but much can be learned (analysis)

The northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita) is an extravagant waterbird adapted to forage in dry, open habitats, and is included in the list of the most genetically and evolutionarily unique creatures of the world. Five centuries ago, it was widespread from Southern and Central Europe to Northern Africa and the Middle East. Since then, it has undergone a steady decline mainly due to human collection of chicks for food, direct persecution, and habitat change, but also, it is suspected, due to the long-term changes of the climate (namely the so-called Little Ice Age, which occurred in Europe mainly between 1550 and 1650, and the current era’s global warming).

Following its extinction from Central and Southern Europe more than four centuries ago, the species split into two geographically disconnected populations, one inhabiting northwestern Africa (Algeria and Morocco) and the other one the Middle East (Turkey and Syria), which diverged over time in relation to their behavior outside the breeding season. The western population is more or less resident, while the eastern one (or “oriental”) is a long-range migrant. Unsurprisingly, having been separated for centuries, the populations have proven to be genetically distinct, as evidenced by two independent studies performed in 2001.

Extinct from Egypt millennia ago, the so-called oriental population still holds important cultural symbolism in the Middle East. It is mentioned in the Old Testament as a messenger of fertility and was sacred to the ancient Egyptians as the symbol of the afterworld divinity, Akh. In recent history, it used to breed between Turkey and Syria. Four very large colonies, counting hundreds of breeding pairs, are known to have existed until not so long ago, in Birecik, Turkey, and two sites in Syria: the Palmyra steppe, and near the town of Raqqa, along the Euphrates River.

Up to the 1960-1980s, the bald ibis was a common sight in the open steppes and agricultural fields of central Syria and southern Anatolia: its loud colonies nesting on imposing cliffs were not easily missed by locals or travelers. The ornithologist Israel Aharoni visited the colonies of the Palmyra steppe twice on horseback during the 1910s and 1920s, recording at least two large colonies with hundreds of pairs.

Elderly Bedouin nomads recounted that the ibis was considered a symbol of wisdom, similar to what was believed by ancient Egyptians in regards to ibis in general (as a taxonomic family), and that they used to collect their chicks for food by means of perilously using ropes fixed at the top of the cliffs.

Even British captain and adventurer T.E. Lawrence described this conspicuous bird in his book, sometimes observed as a captive within the tents of nomads, sometimes in the wild. The large colony of Birecik was well known, thanks to studies by German ornithologist Udo Hirsch during the 1980s. This colony nested on cliffs beside the village of Birecik, whose inhabitants used to mark the ibis’s arrival from migration as the official beginning of spring. They also believed that the same birds used to guide the pilgrims towards Mecca.

These middle-sized and weird-looking birds, typically congregating in large flocks, did not go unnoticed during migration and in their wintering grounds, either. Captain Flower from the British Navy recorded “hundreds of bald ibises” in flying formation, migrating following the course of the Blue Nile in February 1922, probably returning to their breeding grounds in the Middle East. Remarkable also are the opportunistic observations of bald ibises recorded on the Ethiopian highlands outside the breeding season by Italian and British military personnel between the 1880s and World War II.

The decline and extinction from the wild of the roughly 1,000-bird colony of Birecik is well recorded: decimated first by the use of DDT during the 1960s and then by an increasingly low recruitment from migration, by 1989 the colony became semicaptive and thus not migratory anymore.

The decline of the Syrian colonies could only be reconstructed from data collected in 2001-2003. German ornithologist Wolfang Baumgart in his 1995 publication on the birds of Syria stated that the species had vanished from Syria around or soon after the 1930s. I was part of a team that proved this was not true, and that the real decline of Syrian steppe colonies had instead taken place later, during the 1970-1980s. The main cause being habitat degradation and uncontrolled hunting driven by the improved efficiency of killing in an open environment that is quite easy to drive through.

Astonishing discovery

In early 2000, I had the privilege to be recruited by, and take service in, a multiyear Italy-funded U.N. aid project aimed at creating a natural reserve in the desert surrounding Palmyra, a remote village at the center of the Syrian steppe, home to one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the region. At that time, Syria was still a sleepy dictatorship disguised as a republic.

In its early stages, the project was mired in a labyrinth of corruption and bureaucracy. During these years, I led a ragtag team of local trainees with the goal to identify and inventory the flora and fauna of the area, with a special focus on those species with international relevance, as the goal was to develop some sort of ecotourism, and in so doing, to benefit the local community.

Since its early stages, the team made good use of local ecological knowledge by fully involving local nomads and hunters in the program, developing a scientifically based module to select the most reliable sources of information. It was close collaboration with an experienced Palmyra hunter that enabled a sensational discovery that made headlines around the world, which a bird-watching magazine later dubbed the “Tutankhamen’s tomb of Arabian ornithology.”

In April 2002, despite being believed extinct for more than 70 years from Syria, the team found a relict and forgotten breeding colony of seven wild bald ibises, the last living descendants of those revered by the ancient pharaohs. At the time listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List as one of the rarest and most threatened of the world, and its long, hooked beak immortalized in a fine, 4,500-year-old hieroglyph at the Temple of Horus in Edfu, Egypt, the bald ibis had long flown only in the imagination of naturalists and the faded memories of elderly Bedouins.

Prior to the discovery, the team spent several winter months in the steppe searching across the vast Palmyra steppe, guided only by the clues from Aharoni’s old and vague accounts and carrying a standard questionnaire we asked to more than 100 nomad families. In the end, the relict colony was found exactly where the Palmyra hunter had “confessed” to having killed five of them eight years before. He recounted that at the time he brought the birds to show to his village, as they looked so unfamiliar, and they even tried to eat them, but found them disgusting (which is another identifying clue, according to the literature).

Strenuous conservation efforts

Fueled by high enthusiasm and passion sparked by the discovery, the Palmyra wildlife team tended to avoid too much rational thinking. At times when alone, I reflected, a bit worried, that an equivalent conservation objective of that complexity (rescuing a long-range migratory species starting from a few breeding individuals) was in fact achieved only in rich and developed countries with a full help of civil society (like the whooping crane in the U.S. in the 1940s, recovered from only 16 individuals).

Instead, we were talking about rescuing the last migratory bald ibis population, starting from only seven adult individuals, in the middle of a nation governed by a very secretive and paranoid military regime (where of course no civil society organization was allowed), and probably migrating across neighboring countries no less difficult to work in (like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Sudan, etc.).

At that stage we chose without hesitation to believe in miracles, and a conservation struggle against time ensued in April 2002, following the moves and turns of a game consisting of three chapters.

In the first chapter (2002-2004), we worked safely under the U.N. project and established a quite efficient, community-based, and around-the-clock protection program — from the day of the arrival to the day of departure of the birds — every year. By eliminating human disturbance at the nesting site, and minimizing it at their feeding grounds, too, while also zeroing out the chances of poaching, the three-pair colony produced record breeding performances, which filled our hearts with hope.

In the second chapter (2005-2008), the first major shadows emerged. The U.N. project was unexpectedly terminated in the spring of 2004 due to misunderstandings between the donor and the regime. We then started to fully count on the support of international conservation NGOs involved since 2002. The resulting support was weak, and I was shockingly banned from the field in the 2005 and 2008 breeding seasons, during which, due to insufficient protection efforts, the colony failed at breeding. At the time, the recurrent metaphor mentioned by the Palmyra ibis team was that of an ambulance carrying a severely wounded patient, attempting to drive on a highway made of glue.

In 2006 and 2007, I sneaked back into the field as a volunteer, and the satellite tagging of three adults was realized, thanks to the involvement of veteran ornithologist Lubomir Peske from the Czech Republic. The whole ordeal of tagging the birds lasted three years, mired in the corruption of local authorities, the politics of NGOs, and the highly neophobic behavior of the birds. Yet in July 2006, we were able to reconstruct for the first time the legendary southward migration of the oriental ibises — and, astonishingly — confirming the Birecik villagers’ memory that they used to guide the pilgrims to Mecca!

Following a 10-day stopover in Yemen, they finally reached a remote corner of the Ethiopian highlands, where they settled for the winter. Thanks to a National Geographic Society grant and the collaboration of an Ethiopian NGO, we assessed the status of the birds at the wintering grounds. Through two different expeditions, we realized that the situation at the wintering grounds, despite the birds living within agricultural habitats and villages most of the time, was more or less safe.

At that stage, I set out to prepare my return to the field in Palmyra by requesting support from another international conservation NGO and obtaining, through various misadventures, and not without taking personal risks, political support from the Syrian first lady, who at the time was publicly committed to rural development and possibly was also keen to have a green image.

Starting from 2009, the beginning of the third and last chapter, we were finally back operating safely in Palmyra, and supported by the regime’s top levels. But the perfect storm, which had been looming gradually in previous years over our heads, was ready to strike.

Starting that year, the colony was down to two pairs, while in 2010 we had only one. The breeding of the colony began to suffer social disruption and became extremely vulnerable to raven predation, and we started to realize that despite the 24 chicks successfully fledged between 2002 and 2007, the colony was actually shrinking gradually and inexorably, mainly due to a lack of recruitment.

Basically, all those chicks had migrated southward with their parents in early July, but few of them had made it back to the colony in the following years. The same problem was experienced by the Birecik colony during the 1980s.

At the same time, between 2006 and 2008, an unusually long and intense drought plagued the Syrian steppe, probably making it tough for adults to raise chicks. Possibly more time than usual was spent in search of food, leaving the chicks unguarded in the nest, which were readily exploited by ravens. Therefore, despite the intensive protection program being back in force, no chick managed to fledge that year. An artificial recruitment program led by Austrian colleagues of Waldrappteam, using chicks fledged at Birecik and transferred to Palmyra, was initiated successfully in 2010. That year, the ibis colony, down to one pair, produced only one chick.

The three artificially recruited chicks followed one wild adult on her migration southward. Thanks to this exercise, we had the first clues on the migratory strategy of juveniles. Based on satellite tracking of adults and juveniles, we finally focused on what was the most likely reason for the low recruitment: uncontrolled hunting across the Saudi Arabian migratory flyway, and electrocution on power lines. These threats were confirmed in the field by two expeditions performed along the route.

Then, the unexpected onset of civil war in March 2011 swept away all remaining hopes like a cyclone, wasting substantial funds — which had been secured with strenuous efforts and thanks to long periods of volunteering — from the Italian government for a full-size, community-based, three-year project. Reluctantly, I had to leave the country worried for my Palmyran companions.

In the following years, they bravely managed to keep an eye on the breeding birds in Palmyra. In spring 2013 and 2014, a single adult female aptly named Salam (Peace) returned stubbornly to the nesting cliff of Palmyra for the last time, to witness a country devastated by human fury and hatred. Our Ethiopian colleagues, meanwhile, observed the last scattered immature birds at the wintering grounds, up to 2015. When the conflict reached Palmyra, in the most violent and brutal way, in 2015, the whole population was forced to flee, including my friends. From that moment on, I started focusing on my endangered companions by organizing annual fundraising events for their benefit, and joining forces with colleagues and NGOs to assist some of them to flee the country.

An uneasy analysis

I am afraid at this time we can quite safely state that, most likely, this legendary bird population breeding in the Middle East has slipped into functional extinction. The risk of another early funeral is only prevented by the remote chance that there may be still another tiny and forgotten colony hiding on cliffs in remote areas of the region (perhaps in northern Iraq?).

The official declaration for a species extinction usually takes a long time. Populations, even if behaviorally and genetically distinct, apparently do not deserve this process. And in fact, paradoxically, during the same years the bald ibis was becoming extinct as a migratory species, the extravagant decision to downlist it to endangered was taken based on the argument that the species overall in recent times had improved its conservation status, as the western resident population had increased its size (to about 700 birds) thanks to in-situ conservation measures. That was also based on captive breeding and reintroduction schemes in Spain, Austria and Italy.

It was a controversial decision, and I was not the only one criticizing it: the relevance for the species of a distinct genetic set of the migratory oriental population was basically dismissed. The oriental population was not only a culturally iconic species at a regional scale, but it also used to be a keystone species for the Syrian steppe ecosystem. In the past, there used to be massive numbers of these birds feeding on invertebrates across the pastures in springtime, therefore regulating the numbers of bugs in the steppe. It may not be a coincidence that the gradual extinction of the bald ibis from the Syrian steppe runs in parallel with the progressive impoverishment and weakening of the steppe ecosystem under the yoke of the overexploitation due to sheep grazing and defaunation driven by uncontrolled harvest and hunting.

The steppe’s ecological crisis started in the 1970s, driven by the Soviet-style objective of maximizing yields and the consequent overexploitation of resources, catalyzed and accelerated during recent decades by climate change. Several warnings by the FAO to Syria’s government went unheard. The ecological crisis reached its apex in 2008 when Syria, a country traditionally proud of its food sovereignty, was forced to request international food aid, for the first time ever. In those years, the agricultural systems of eastern Syria collapsed and large amounts of impoverished people moved west to urban areas in search of work.

In 2009, I released an interview while in Syria through which I underlined that this ecological crisis, largely ignored by the regime despite the warnings, had eventually started to cause mass internal migrations. I even dared to add that this may eventually cause social unrest and possibly a civil war in the future. A few years later, when the prophecy became a tragic reality, I argued that the ecological crisis of the Syrian steppe was one of the key drivers of the civil war, and at the same time refuted a view published by the BBC that ISIS had to be blamed for the bald ibis extinction.

Certainly, attempting to save a long-range migratory population starting from seven individuals was a highly ambitious task, having acknowledged the initial unfavorable conditions. However, seen in retrospect and with the due detachment, I can say that the goal was achievable, based on still vivid, direct field experience. Unfortunately, following the 2004 breeding season, the requirements of the emergency and the ambition of the challenge were not fully embraced by partners, generating a lethal discontinuity in political, institutional and financial support during the second chapter (2005-2008).

Without delays and setbacks, we could have tackled the key threat of low recruitment years earlier, at a time when the relict colony was still vital. We also could have then initiated vigorous restocking with captive-born chicks in Palmyra, just at the last useful minute. In the end, the severely wounded patient reached the hospital already in agony, a “too little, too late” scenario sadly seen so frequently in attempts to save species on the brink.

On the positive side, we could claim that these relentless efforts probably had beneficial effects for other migratory species, as they raised awareness of the key threats affecting the major migratory flyway running along the Red Sea Basin. The Saudi government joined the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species in 2023, and several conservation initiatives were apparently funded and implemented along that flyway in recent times. The hope is that this new awareness and action will result in safer migration for several soaring birds that used to share the flyway with the bald ibis, six of which are listed as globally threatened, and four as declining.

Gianluca Serra is a wildlife ecologist from Florence, Italy, with 25 years of international experience in conservation of biodiversity and endangered species, community-based protected areas management through international aid, and the valuing of Indigenous knowledge. For further insights on this ibis conservation effort, a comprehensive and independent technical report, “The Last Flight of the Ancient Guide of Hajj,” was released in 2014 and made freely available online.

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