AP, BELGRADE
Feliks’ journey resembles a Hollywood movie script, with kidnappers, smugglers and a daring cross-border mission.The year-old eastern imperial eagle from Serbia last year set off on his first migratory flight toward the Middle East, only to be captured by poachers.While Feliks returned home safely last week, his ordeal highlighted the widespread illegal animal trade and animal protection groups’s struggles to counter it.
Feliks, an eastern imperial eagle, looks out from a cage at Palic Zoo in Serbia on Wednesday last week.
“It’s getting worse year after year, season after season, day after day,” said Lebanese Association for Migratory Birds president Michel Sawan, who played a key role in Feliks’ rescue.The protected species was down to a single breeding pair in Serbia in 2017, but has recovered thanks to the work of the Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia (BPSSS).
The precious offspring of a new generation of eagles, Feliks was ringed and got a “small backpack” with a transmitter before setting off in August last year, society representative Uros Stojiljkovic said.“Everything seemed normal,” Stojiljkovic added. “We didn’t dream all this would happen.”Feliks first circled close to home before heading southeast across North Macedonia, Greece and Turkey. His tracking signal was lost in late October in Syria.“We hoped this was because there was a problem with the transmitter,” Stojiljkovic said.Weeks passed before the news came from Sawan: Feliks had been put up for sale after he was captured by poachers who catch migratory birds by placing water in the desert, or shoot at them, capture them with nets or chase them with motorcycles.“When Felix was caught at first, it was posted on many WhatsApp groups for selling wild birds illegally trapped in Syria,” Sawan said. “I started my phone calls with people I know in Syria and we were able to reach out for Feliks.”Feliks was sold to a buyer in Lebanon and resold into Syria before Sawan retrieved him through a network of associates.Getting Feliks over the border into Lebanon was then impeded by fighting in the region and bad weather, but eventually, a group of refugees carried Feliks in a potato sack over the Nahr al-Kabir river on the northern border between Syria and Lebanon, he said.“It was crazy,” he said.Safely in Sawan’s bird sanctuary in Beirut, Feliks still needed to get back home, a task that seemed impossible after the start of the war in Iran in February.After three failed attempts, the Serbian Army came to the rescue through its troops serving in a UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Feliks arrived back in Serbia aboard a military transport plane on Monday last week.He is in a zoo in northern Serbia where he must be quarantined for 21 days.BPSSS experts said the eagle would get a new transmitter before he is released again.Over the past decade, the society has planted trees and set up bird platforms across the flat agricultural plain of northern Serbia.Back in 2017, volunteers organized a 24-hour watch of the remaining nesting pair to make sure they were safe. An EU-backed project later helped beef up the population to 29 breeding couples.Dangers remain, from accidental poisoning to electrical cables, Stojiljkovic said.“Feliks went full circle and came back to where he had set off,” Stojiljkovic said. “Let’s hope he won’t be bored here.”
