Prague, April 4 (CTK) – The zoo in the Moravian capital Brno will assist in returning Steller’s sea eagles and red-crowned cranes into the wild in the Far East where their populations have critically shrunk, daily Pravo wrote on Tuesday.
Without people’s support, the rare species are threatened with extinction due to intensive raw material exploitation in their habitats and also due to global warming unfriendly to wetland.
“A solution rests in their artificial breeding and the release into the wild,” the zoo director Martin Hovorka is quoted as saying.
A few days ago, Hovorka was elected vice-president of the Eurasian association of zoos and aquariums (EARAZA) comprised of dozens of zoological gardens from central and eastern Europe and Asia.
He discussed the project of the eagle and crane return to the Far East wild in Moscow on Monday, Pravo writes.
In cooperation with the Brno zoo, a centre for the Steller’s eagle salvation is to be established in the Amur River area to breed young eagles and release them into the wild.
The red-crowned-crane salvation project has already been underway. Last year, experts from the Brno zoo transferred six crane eggs to the Khinganski nature reserve in the Amur area, Pravo writes.
Young cranes have hatched from five of them, and they will be released into the wild after growing up, Pravo writes.
The crane salvation also involves other Czech zoos and the zoo in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, the paper writes.
Hovorka said his zoo has launched two public fund-raising campaigns in support of the two projects.
Czech zoological gardens also significantly contribute to several other international projects of animal salvation.
Thanks to the Prague zoo, several rare Przewalski horses, a species that previously got extinct in the wild, have been released in their natural habitats in Mongolia in the past years.
The Dvur Kralove, east Bohemia, zoo has assisted in the return of the black rhinoceros to the wild in Tanzania, Pravo writes.
