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TOKYO, May 20: Endangered Oriental white storks have naturally hatched a chick in Japan for the first time in more than four decades, a park official said Sunday.
Wild Oriental white storks became extinct in Japan in 1971, since when Japanese conservationists have tried breeding some pairs of the migrant birds donated by Russia and released several of them into the wild.
But until now there had been no confirmed natural hatchings in Japan since 1964.
“We have seen at least three eggs laid in the nest,” said Masayoshi Iida, an official of the breeding park for endangered birds in Hyogo prefecture, some 450kms west of Tokyo.—AFP
