Foreword- Annual Report 2006
After twenty years, marked by an unprecedented success among the reintroduction projects, we face now a period of changes, of large significance under many points of view. We extended the range of action, as new reintroduction projects and new challenges have taken or are taking shape: in Andalusia reintroduction began in 2006, whilst in Sardinia the first release will likely take place in 2008. Unfortunately the financial situation is precarious, as the Zoological Society of Frankfurt, after having supported, as it couldn’t have been done better, the Project of reintroduction of the Bearded Vulture into the Alps, has decided to support other projects, related to the reintroduction or the strengthening of the populations of Vultures in Europe. It is therefore gradually reducing the funds assigned to the Breeding Centre of Vienna. The Foundation, which in twenty years has given free of charge to the release sites 144 pulli, born from birds of its own property, finds now itself obliged to look for other sources, to finance the breeding centre.
The organisation, I have the honour to preside, has been for the past a sort of charitable body, fact till now unfortunately not realized by everybody. To this basic problem, one has to add other causes of uncertainty for the whole Project. The LIFE Project, which gave funds to the release sites from 2003, will come to an end in March 2007, so making unsure the possibility to continue, at least for some of them, the undertaken tasks, above all the monitoring action, which is already and will be even more in the future of the utmost importance.
The presence of more and more birds in reproductive age is radically changing the characteristics of the monitoring, necessary to follow the evolution of the reintroduced population. This fact has lead to the need of such a change in the database, used till now to collect the observations in the Alpine arch, as it meant indispensable to study and realize a new and very expensive database, which the Foundation had to pay. Like all the people who became fond of this Alpine project, working actively on it or even only simply following its evolution, being keen on nature, I wish that the above mentioned difficulties and the others, unavoidable and resulting from them, will be overcome with the same spirit of active collaboration and environmental responsibility, which have distinguished every step of this wonderful adventure.
Dr. PAOLO FASCE
President of the Foundation for the
Conservation of the Bearded Vulture