MAY: VETERINARIANS from Košice, environmentalists from the Raptor Protection Society of Slovakia (Ochrana dravcov na Slovensku) and representatives of Východo-slovenská energetika (VSE), an electricity distribution company, worked together to save a male Eastern imperial eagle, about four years old, which had been electrocuted at the end of March.
Even though the eagle’s survival cannot be considered a miracle, there was only one way to assure that it could quickly return to the wild and this kind of treatment had never been attempted before in Slovakia, Ladislav Šimák of the Raptor Society told the TASR newswire. When the eagle was found it was not able to fly as its tail and wings were severely burned. The eagle was taken to the University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy (UVL) in Košice where vets decided to replace the burned body parts with ones from other animal donors. Ladislav Molnár of the UVL explained for TASR that the experimental method of replacing feathers is very demanding as it is hard to find proper donors. He said that the eagle was under complete anaesthesia, adding that natural replacement of the feathers would have taken two or three years.
