By Yury Bakhnov
MOSCOW (Reuters) – The conservationists hold the rare saker falcon down at Siberia’s Taigun hatchery and tattoo the letters S.O.S. onto the base of its bill – part of a new scheme to try and save the bird from poachers.
The procedure is practically painless, said Artyom Kucher, the vet who came up with the plan at the centre in Barnaul, capital of Altai region.
The aim is to make the falcons worthless to gangs who catch and sell them on to wealthy clients in the Middle East for hunting.
Prices for the birds can reach tens of thousands of dollars. But buyers prefer wild birds and the tattoos show they came from a hatchery.
“Hunters can simply remove and cut off metal ID rings on their feet and make them saleable, and nobody will know they came from a hatchery,” Kucher said. “The tattoo will provide extra protection.”
Twelve saker falcons hatched in captivity have already been tattooed on their bills and had identification numbers stencilled above their claws.
The birds are listed as endangered by the British-based group BirdLife International, with between 12,200-29,800 left globally. Their numbers are estimated to have halved in the past 20 years.
Kucher said saker falcons bred in Russia were at risk of being caught along their migration routes to Asia including in Kazakhstan.
Newly hatched falcons get tattoos when they are just several weeks old. They are later released into the wild or placed into wild saker falcon nests in a national park close to Russia’s border with Mongolia.
(Writing by Maria Vasilyeva; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Andrew Heavens)
