Fears are rising amongst conservationists that the western inhabitants of Siberian Crane might now be extirpated following the failure of the final identified individual to return to Iranian wintering grounds.
The plight of ‘Omid’ has made headlines in recent years because the more and more old-aged fowl has accomplished its annual migration alone between breeding grounds within the Siberian wilderness and its winter home of Fereydoon Kenar in Iran.
Omid sometimes arrives again in Iran throughout November however has failed to seem to date this winter, main birders to suspect that he might have perished, due to this fact taking with him any remaining hope that the western inhabitants of this declining fowl could also be saved.
Omid the Siberian Crane photographed in Azerbaijan in March 2022 (Selmeczi Kovács Ádám).
Last winter, a captive-born feminine Siberian Crane, referred to as ‘Roya’, was launched in Iran and shortly partnered with Omid. The birds left collectively on their migration in early March, however birders anticipating the arrival of the cranes at a identified stop-over website in Azerbaijan (the place Omid was seen in 2020 and 2022) didn’t see both fowl. It later got here to mild that Roya had been discovered alone in north-west Iran on 12 March and had been recaptured. Omid has not been seen since he left Fereydoon Kenar.
Siberian Crane is now recognised as Critically Endangered worldwide. Small numbers wintered in India till 2002, after they did not return for the primary time. An jap inhabitants of round 2,000 people nonetheless persists, breeding in north-eastern Siberia and wintering at Poyang Lake within the Lower Yangtze River Basin in China, however is severely threatened by improvement of the Three Gorges Dam (and different dams) alongside the Yangtze River.
