Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
After the northern bald ibis disappeared from Europe more than 300 years ago, some assumed that 16th century drawings of its gleaming plume and long, arching beak were works of the imagination.
The birds, which were once found in three continents, were so revered in the ancient world that they have their own hieroglyph – a depiction of their distinctive outline that represents the word akh, meaning “spirit”.
But by the 1990s, the once-thriving species was considered one of the rarest birds in the world, with its global population in the wild reduced to just 59 pairs – all in Morocco – due to hunting, habitat loss, and the use of pesticides.
Today, tenacious conservation efforts in Morocco have increased the population to more than 500 individuals, resulting in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species changing its status from critically endangered to endangered in 2018.
In addition, thanks to a first-of-its-kind reintroduction program, the ibises are back migrating in Europe for the first time since the 1600s, with a managed migratory population of around 270 birds.
