Bosnia’s last two Griffon vultures, birds that once flew the country’s sky in dozens, have died last week most likely of poisoning, the head of a local youth club, Adnan Djuliman, told N1 on Tuesday.
Lily and Jablan lived in a cage in an Eco Centre in Blagaj for years. They were the only birds of their kind left in Bosnia.
The first autopsy reports indicate they might have been poisoned.
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“It was a big tragedy for all of us, because we’ve worked with these birds for twelve years, we fed them some 15 tons of food,” said Djuliman, the head of the ‘Novi Val’ youth club, adding that some 23 thousand school children visited the birds as part of various programmes, as well as thousands of tourists.
“Now, there are hundreds of questions being raised,” he said, asking how the birds could have come in contact with the poison.
“We looked at everything, we did everything, analysed, and in the end, we found out that Lily was poisoned, but we are not sure about Jablan yet,” he said.
Jablan’s corpse is still being analysed.
Despite the tragedy, Djuliman said that the efforts to return the Griffon vulture to Bosnia will continue. In order for them to survive, artificial feeders need to be put up, he said.
“If there is a feeder, butchers don’t have to throw away their trash into nature, where it is illegal to do so. They can store them and transport them to certain places, feeders,” he said.
“Those feeders benefit the vultures, as well as the butchers and hunters,” he added.
“This will incite us to continue fighting for the survival of Griffon vultures and, of course, new birds will come, we will not stop here,” said a member of the Eco Centre, Nedim Obad.
The Griffon lived in Blagaj until 1991, when 30 full grown birds were poisoned.
They are an endangered species but are very useful in an ecosystem because they feed on corpses and stop potential outbreaks of diseases among cattle.
Since they have no natural predators, poisoning is the leading cause of death among the species.
