As happened last year, Sara has returned to Italy! The young Egyptian vulture left Niger on March 18, 2020 and on April 28 reached Sicily, after crossing Algeria and Tunisia and stopping for a day on the Island of Pantelleria.
During her trip in Africa, Sara stopped for many days between Algeria and Tunisia, where ornithologists Sarra Messabhia (ANAO, Association nationale algérienne d’ornithologie) and Hichem Azafzaf and Claudia Feltrup-Azafzaf were alerted (respectively coordinator of the scientific program and executive director of the Association “Les Amis des Oiseaux” – AAO / BirdLife Tunisia), who collaborate every year in monitoring the Egyptian vultures freed in Italy. During her trip and stay in Italy Sara will be able to count on the large group of “friends” who collaborate on the LIFE Egyptian vulture project and who are ready to control her movements and ensure her safety.
We must remember that the young Egyptian vulture had been freed by the CERM Association in the Gravina di Laterza, in Puglia, on August 16, 2015, on behalf of the Ministry of the Environment and thanks to the collaboration with LIPU BirdLife. At the end of August of that same year, at about 3 months of age, Sara had left for a journey of almost 4,000 km that had brought her to Niger.
In spring 2019, after four years spent in sub-Saharan Africa interspersed with summer transfers in northern Algeria, Sara had returned to Italy for the first time and had settled between Basilicata and Calabria, not before having wandered all over the Peninsula. In early August she had migrated back to Africa.
