A mission from the European Commission to the LIFE+ project “The Return of the Neophron”

13.10.2014

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A mission from the European Commission to the LIFE+ project “The Return of the Neophron”

Officers from the LIFE Nature Unit of the European Commission - Mr. Simon Goss, Mrs. Brunhilde Rack, and Mrs. Silvia Barova from the Department “Natura 2000”, the “Birds” Directive, and the “Habitats” Directive,visited the project “The Return of the Neophron” during the period 22-24.09.2014. The aim of the mission was to inspect the technical and financial implementation of the project, as well as to demonstrate some of the project activities on the field. The visit was attended by representatives of all partner organizations of the project – the coordinating beneficiary Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds / BirdLife Bulgaria (BSPB), and the associated beneficiaries – the Hellenic ornithological Society / BirdLife Greece (HOS), WWF Greece, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Mr. Stoyan Yotov from ASTRALE who monitors the project, and local people, directly involved in the project activities.

During the inspection, two of the project sites – the Special Protection Area (SPA) Provadiisko-Rojaksko plateau, and the SPA Lomovete, in northern Bulgaria were visited. The participants in the mission were able to see the northernmost range of the Egyptian vulture in Eastern Europe, one of the last Egyptian vultures’ nests in northern Bulgaria and the "home" of the most famous pair in the Balkans – the nest with the installated camera for online distant observation. They visited the sites for nest guarding and supplementary feeding of vultures, some dangerous pylons insulated within the project, information materials and signboards about the project and the species.

The participants in the mission visited the Central Office of Nature Park "Russenski Lom", where the options for future cooperation for sustainable management of habitats and effective actions for preventing the extinction of the Egyptian vulture from the park were discussed. The new exposition of the Regional History Museum in Ruse, which includes figures of Egyptian vultures and information board on the species supported by the LIFE+ project, was also demonstrated. A meeting with speleo-club „Prista“ in Ruse was organized, where environmentalists and extreme sports enthusiasts shared experiences, ideas and hopes for biodiversity conservation in Lomovete.

The project team expresses its sincere appreciation to the local collaborators Medzhnun Ademov and Mitko Angelov from Provadia, Georgi Georgiev, Krasimir Manev, Christiana Stomonyakova-Popova and Ventseslav Petkov from Ruse, who accompanied us on the field and told us their stories and memories for the Egyptian vulture.