During my time at the Conservancy I have been involved with many unusual/interesting things; however my recent experience was the most... well bizarre!

As part of my role as the curator I check EAZA and BIAZA’s available and wanted list weekly. These acronyms stand for European or British and Irish Associations of Zoos and Aquaria. Last November I noticed 50 Vultures had appeared on the list. Fifty! Initially there was no explanation as to why so many birds were available; there is normally a comment or two if birds are on the surplus list.

Andy with Yitzhak Yadid, curator of Rome Zoo

After I pressed the request button I had a reply from Yitzhak Yadid, who is the Curator of Rome Zoo. Yitzhak was asked by the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) office in Rome to look for a temporary home for these birds. After lots of correspondence I discovered the birds had been confiscated and were part of a court case. I then found out there were actually over 100 Vultures being held!

I was asked plenty of questions; how big are your aviaries? What kind of education program do you run? Are you involved in any conservation programs? How many EEPs (European Endangered Species Programmes) do you hold? In the future there might be a possibility that we will ask you to send some of the birds to an in situ conservation program. Are you willing to do this? Etc.

All of my answers were presented to the court and I/we had to wait. By the way, I had said that we would be willing to hold three species of vultures here at the Trust; hopefully at some point in time they would go back to the wild.

Months passed and no more emails, and to be honest I had put the birds to the back of my mind. Life is busy at the park and birds are promised often but many don’t materialize.

An email arrived saying it should be soon and how many could we take? The number of birds went up, now standing at 22 (8 African white-backed, 6 white-headed and 6 Hooded Vultures and 2 Savannah Hawks). Finally Yitzhak got approval from the Italian authorities to move the birds to us; this is where life got very interesting!

Don't look so worried Andy, it'll all be fine!

After waiting one year exactly, I was given 10 days to sort out how we were going to collect them. I had been able to organise some of the paperwork beforehand but most of it needs to be done at the time of collection. DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs), Animal Health centres, transport certificate, vets approval etc. The birds were kept 60 miles north of Rome, quite a drive from the park! However this was the first time I was told this information, I had assumed they were at Rome Zoo. Too far to drive there and back (we had to supply our own boxes to transport them) so a professional company was found to drive them back to us.

They're somewhere up there

There was an element of secrecy about the whole affair and I still didn’t know exactly where the birds were. 60 miles North of Rome could mean you are literally roaming around, looking up one or two mountains! “Don’t worry”, I was told, “when you arrive I will give you my number and we can meet in this small village”. I wondered if it would be better to have a contact number before I left England. I have neglected to say that both Ashley and I were to fly to Rome, hire a car, and meet Yitzhak about 60 miles north of Rome.

We also would be travelling with the BBC! As most of you will know Chris Packham is a presenter on the Inside Out programme. Chris thought it would make a good story, and so did Jane (the producer). Being filmed is part and parcel of working at the Trust and neither of us mind, however being filmed in a different country trying to work out where we were going and meeting people in some small village without a contact number? The firm transporting the birds were giving me a bit of a hard time; they also wanted to know where they had to go. “Don’t worry”, I said, “I will ring you when I know”.

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

The dodgy car

Leaving on the Monday afternoon, Ash and I still didn’t know exact destination or have a contact number to ring. I don’t know about you, but I like to have a clear plan in my head when travelling, I don’t normally have someone filming it all either. Last minute phone calls from the airport and we had a contact number, hooray. We arrived at Ciampion Airport and the first job was to collect our hire car. Now driving on the left is something I have done on numerous occasions. Opening and closing of electric doors was something I had never encountered; electric doors that would take your arm off, if in line of fire.

Joe the BBC cameraman filmed all of this including shots of us struggling to close car doors, and nearly being knocked down crossing a really busy road. Before setting off towards Magliano dei Marsi (MDM) I thought it wise to ring Yitzhak; he thought that we would arrive at MDM before him but we could have a drink and wait. A hotel had been arranged but I hadn’t been told which one! Arriving at MDM early evening and after a couple of phone calls to the transporting firm and Yitzhak, we all met up at a lay-by just outside MDM. This was very strange; being filmed in the dark (with gunshots going off behind us!). It was then we were informed there were even more birds!

The road to nowhere

We stayed overnight at a rather basic hotel (though the food was excellent). I didn’t sleep much, a combination of nerves and excitement had me up and about before light. Ashley was the same, but a hearty breakfast of a bun and a coffee had us set for the day! The scenery was fantastic; high in the mountains, very cold and frosty. Joe was also busy getting gv’s (general views) for the programme.

Vultures vultures everywhere

At 9am we were told we would be collected and taken to where the vultures were being held (already having waited several hours). We could not take our little hire car as the birds were up a dirt track and only 4x4 would get there. Where the tarmac finished and the dirt track started we were joined by a posse of people - State vets and another TV crew, CITES officials, us and the BBC, forestry chaps from that area, etc. 25-30 in total.

Ash and I were very concerned about the condition the birds would be in, I had tried without any luck to find that information. We had feared the worst, however when we arrived our fears were lifted. The birds were in really good condition, (a huge sigh of relief, one of our biggest worries was gone). The aviaries were large enough for the birds to keep fit.                       

Watch this space for the next instalment…