Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - Rare offspring again in the Stuttgart Wilhelma: After the Somali wild asses, cheetahs and Malayan tapirs, the snowy owls have now also had young animals. It is the first offspring of this species in the zoological and botanical garden since 2008. So far, the offspring that hatched in mid-July has largely gone unnoticed by visitors, said a Wilhelma spokesman on Wednesday. "It's only four weeks that the chicks are so independent that they are easy to spot individually."
Since 2017, snowy owls have been classified as endangered on the Red List. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the declining population of an estimated only 14,000 to 25,000 birds in the wild as "endangered". The species suffers from climate change as the permafrost in the tundra thaws, changing the ecosystem of their breeding grounds.
