HIGHS

- 2002-04: UN-FAO/(Italian Development Cooperation) ibis project ensured a high breeding performance with full involvement of local community during 3 breeding seasons. A total of fourteen chicks fledged (an average breeding performance of 1,76 chick fledged per nest). Thanks to these fledged chicks, three recruitment events took place in 2006, 2007, and 2009 - compensating the natural mortality of adults.

- 2002-04: eight individuals from the local community (Bedouin nomads, Palmyra hunters and Govt. staff) were intensively trained as rangers and eco-guides. Two of them started to make a living out of eco-guiding - a first for Syria. These persons have become the first true conservationists in Syria.

- 2005-06: a photographic exhibition (*) paved the road to obtain permissions for trapping and tagging with satellite transmitters 3 adult ibises. The field operation (*) was successful thanks to trapping and tagging long-term experience of Czech ornithologist Lubomir Peske: three adults were tagged and the migration route and wintering site of the colony were discovered .

- October 2006: national awareness campaign reached the climax when First Lady Mrs Asma al Assad inaugurated a photo-exhibition in Damascus on the ibises (*) - and next day all major national newspapers made headlines about the ecological crisis of Syrian steppe.

- 2006-09: Ethiopian wintering site was surveyed three times in cooperation with EWNHS and thanks to National Geographic Society, DGCS and RSPB. No immediate threat for the birds was detected in place (*).

- 2006-07: ten chicks fledged (2.5 chick fledged per nest on average!) thanks to renovated efforts in protection (*).

- 2008-09: an IUCN/DGCS project focused on the specific issue of developing the Ibis Protected Area. Borders and a development & management plan were agreed for the first time with authorities. Key cause for mortality during migration was identified thanks to satellite tagging: one of the two subadults tagged in July 2009, was shot during first day of migration in northern Saudi Arabia.

- 2010: a supplementation test was undertaken, 2 Turkish chicks born in captivity were released at the wild colony in Palmyra. They followed one of the adult ibises for more than 1000 Km into Saudi Arabia. This operation was made it possible by direct intervention of Syrian First Lady Mrs Asma Al Assad, who visited the colony in May.

(*) activities lead, coordinated and advised by G. Serra, forcibly as a volunteer (a premeditated mobbing and exclusion strategy); successful outcomes were very often used for media releases without due acknowledgements nor credits of any sort.

LOWS

- 2003-05: mainly due to institutional improvisations and naïveté, two-three years delay in obtaining the permissions to tag the birds: causes for an 85% mortality rate of young outside breeding grounds was discovered very late (i.e. only in 2009).

- 2003-10: seven years after its establishment in 2003, Ibis Protected Area is still on paper: natural ibis breeding habitats are still being degraded and destroyed nowadays (oil companies, eco-tourism infrastructures etc.).

- 2005 & 2008: two very avoidable breeding failures both regularly predicted by G. Serra - who was banned from field operations for obscure “territorial” reasons.

- 2006-10: three-four years delay in implementing the supplementation of Turkish-born birds into Syrian wild colony, due to scientific indecisions and bureaucracy (first calls for supplementation were launched in 2004).

- 2009-10: an Ibis Emergency Action Plan proposed by G. Serra and approved by International Advisory Group on Northern Bald Ibis (IAGNBI) in Nov 2009, remained on paper.