Almost 100 years ago, the last wild Ural owl was shot in the Bavarian-Czech border region. Since 2017, however, the population of the cute owl birds has been growing again.
Erbendorf (dpa / lby) - 16 Ural owls have been released into the wild in northern Bavaria. The young birds should be at home in the forests of the Upper Palatinate and Upper Franconia, as announced by the Association for Landscape Conservation and Species Protection in Bavaria (VLAB) based in Erbendorf (Tirschenreuth district). Since the start of the reintroduction project in 2017, 60 Ural owls have been released into the wild.
The animals are bred by zoos and wildlife parks in France and Germany - including the Opel Zoo in Kronberg im Taunus and the Zoological City Garden in Karlsruhe. Because of the heat, the birds were transported from France to northern Bavaria at night. A Ural owl was brought from Hamburg to Nuremberg by Intercity.
The aim of the project is to establish a stable population in northern Bavaria and to network this with the small population around the Bavarian Forest National Park, said Michaela Domeyer, head of the Ural Owl project. "This should improve the genetic diversity of the owls and reduce the risk of extinction."
Before the birds were released into the wild, they were housed in aviaries for four weeks where they could get used to their new surroundings. During this time they are still fed. According to VLAB, wildlife cameras showed that the screech owls enjoyed bathing in pools of water. About half a dozen of the owls that have been released since 2017 have died, for example in traffic accidents.
In the coming year, the VLAB wants to equip particularly well-developed young owls with battery-operated transmitters before they are released in order to learn more about their distribution after release. Then more incubators could be hung in a targeted manner. There are already around 200 of them in the forests of the Fichtelgebirge, Hessenreuther and Oberpfälzer forests, in the Steinwald, at the Grafenwöhr military training area and across the border to the Czech Republic in the Bohemian Forest.
The Ural owl is the largest and at the same time one of the rarest owls in Central Europe. He is about 60 centimeters tall, has a wingspan of 125 centimeters and can live more than 20 years. In Germany it has been considered extinct for around 100 years. The resettlement project is funded by the Heinz Sielmann Foundation, among others.
