The Mauerschartenkopf is a 1924 meter high peak in the Wetterstein not far from the Zugspitze. On its north side, ski tourers are always drawn up in winter. To the south it falls steeply over extremely steep meadows and light mountain forests with high rock faces into the Reintal, where the Partnach gurgles in the direction of Garmisch. Wally, the female bearded vulture, has been radioing from these southern slopes for four weeks, always from the same spot.
“This is unusual and disturbing,” says bearded vulture expert Toni Wegscheider. “Because it can only mean two things: either Wally has lost her transmitter and the device is transmitting from the spot where it hit the ground.” Or Wally is dead, her corpse including the transmitting GPS device is lying on the south side of the Mauerschartenkopf. These days Wegscheider wants to clarify what’s going on with Wally. He wants to recover the transmitter with colleagues. The action is challenging. The southern slopes of the Mauerschartenkopf are pathless terrain.
Wally is part of the large bearded vulture project that the State Association for Bird Protection (LBV) started in summer 2021 in the Berchtesgaden National Park. Up to 30 bearded vultures are released into the wild in the protected area within ten years. This is intended to strengthen the small Alpine-wide population. Wally and a second female Bearded Vulture named Bavaria started in June 2021.
The action by the Süddeutsche Zeitung was accompanied by a series, has so far been like a picture book. Wally and Bavaria are not only very, very energetic, but have long been experienced flying artists. It was always a breathtaking sight when Wally circled high in the air above the Klausbach valley or on the east face of the Watzmann in the national park. Bearded vultures or Gypaetus barbatus, as it is scientifically called, are among the most powerful birds of prey in the world with a wingspan of almost three meters.
The expert is convinced: Wally has lost the transmitter
Wegscheider is pretty sure that Wally has only lost her transmitter and is now sailing around the airspace above the Alps without a bird. “Wally is 14 months old, we have no evidence that she has any weakness or illness,” he says. “Nothing unusual happened on the flight from the national park to the Wetterstein mountains either, except that it was Wally’s first real long-haul flight.” Until then, she had only stayed in the protected area and its immediate surroundings.
In the second week of April, Wally was obviously upset. On April 11, she flew out of the Göll massif – first to the east to the Salzkammergut. Then she made a sharp turn to the west. On April 13th she was near Inzell, the day after she sailed over the Kaiser mountains past the Achensee into the Karwendel and reached the Wetterstein. As the crow flies, that’s around 180 kilometers. “But Wally didn’t fly as the crow flies, but zigzag,” says Wegscheider. “In the end she was 380 kilometers on the road. That’s a decent achievement.”
Wegscheider was not only able to follow Wally’s flight meticulously, but all her flights from the first take-off. Because the bearded vultures in the LBV project are all equipped with GPS transmitters. The 50 gram parts are as small as a narrow packet of cigarettes and draw their energy from a tiny solar module. Its only disadvantage: If the sun does not shine for a long time, the transmitter does not charge and it can fail. In the winter it often happened that Wegscheider had no radio contact with Wally for days. “That’s why I wasn’t concerned when contact was lost again,” says Wegscheider. “At least not at first.”
The transmitters ideally drop out after five years
The transmitter is attached to waist belts on Wally’s back. They are a special construction made of soft, stable Teflon material and cotton. They fit so well that they do not disturb or even restrict Wally and at the same time the transmitter is safe on her back. They also have a predetermined breaking point. The cotton thread with which they are sewn gradually becomes porous under the influence of wind, weather and sun. At some point, the straps and the transmitter will fall off. “Ideally after about five years,” says Wegscheider. “But it also happens that some fall off earlier.” In the past three months, four young bearded vultures lost their transmitters far ahead of time – no one knows why. That alone is reason enough why Wegscheider wants to recover Wally’s transmitter. He wants to find out why the straps can become so unstable so quickly that they have come loose from her.
But there’s another reason why the biologist wants to recover the transmitter. He wants to be sure that nothing happened to Wally herself. That she’s not dead. Bearded vultures were once widespread in the Alps. The birds of prey are very powerful and look terrifying with their large hooked beaks. But they are harmless and harmless. Because they only eat carrion and bones. Nevertheless, bearded vultures have been exterminated in the Alps. People believed that they prey on sheep and even infants. So they were hunted mercilessly, and at the beginning of the 20th century there were no more bearded vultures in the Alps. They were not resettled until the 1980s.
Today, the image of the vulture is almost entirely positive. This was shown by an internet-based acceptance study by the LBV in the run-up to the resettlement project. “More than 90 percent of the participants have a positive attitude towards vultures,” said LBV boss Norbert Schäffer at her presentation. But there are still people who are strictly against vultures and even poach some. In the spring of 2019, a griffon vulture was illegally shot down in Vorarlberg – just across the Bavarian-Austrian border. Griffon vultures are also scavengers, they are mainly found in Spain. Young griffon vultures make long trips – to northern Germany. They fly over the Alps. Wegscheider wants to make sure that Wally has not met a fate similar to that of the griffon vulture in Vorarlberg.