from Sunday Herald, 12 October 2008
This week, a dozen rare Mexican doves will begin a long journey home. Thirty-six years after their ancestors became extinct in the wild, Edinburgh Zoo is flying them across the Atlantic in the hope they can be freed back into their native forests.
Socorro doves, from islands off Mexico of the same name, died out in 1972 after being hunted by feral cats and losing vital habitat to sheep. As part of a major international project to save the doves, Edinburgh Zoo has been breeding them in captivity since 2005, hatching 15 chicks.
On Thursday 12 birds will be carefully boxed up and sent to Los Angeles, where they will be kept in quarantine for 30 days. Then they will be shipped to zoos in San Francisco and Albuquerque, from where they, or their offspring, will be returned to the Socorro islands.
“We are taking an important step towards reintroducing these birds into the wild,” said Colin Oulton, the head bird keeper at Edinburgh Zoo. The hope was that they would now be able to survive, as the number of feral cats on the Socorro islands had declined.
Breeding the pretty, pink-necked doves had not been easy, Oulton confessed. During courting, the males can become so overexcited that they peck the females to death. “Doves may be symbols of peace, but they are not always peaceful themselves,” he said.
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