For now, each chick is essentially a cloud of white feathers with a black bill and an insatiable appetite for regurgitated food from its parents. But that effort won’t succeed without two things, Tibbott says: policies that protect these birds and a healthy, genetically diverse population.Īround late May, one female began laying eggs, all three of which hatched between June 21 and 23. Reintroducing storks born in captivity into the wild could one day be the species’ best bet for survival, similar to the zoo’s famed condor breeding program. “I see this species extremely declining in the wild, nothing getting better, and then we’re at a point where we look around and they only exist in zoos. “I see a real sad common thing happening with many species,” she said. That number is likely to dip further as people continue to turn their habitats into commercial fish farms. These endangered birds are struggling to survive in the mangroves of Southeast Asia, where there are only 2,200 milky storks left. There’s clear need for such an effort, says Jenny Tibbott, the Safari Park’s senior bird keeper. All these birds now live under the care of the Zoo and Safari Park, where staff are racing against time to establish a successful captive breeding program. The 1-week-old hatchlings don’t know it, but they’re among the only 24 members of their kind found in North America’s zoos. Three recently hatched milky storks at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park have raised hopes that a species fast disappearing from its natural habitat could one day mount a comeback.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |