finance
Eastern Imperial Eagle Feliks Returns to Serbia After Capture in Syria
The one-year-old bird reached Serbia on a military transport plane on June 22 after poachers seized it in Syria and a rescue network moved it across the Lebanon border. It is now quarantined for 21 days before release with a new transmitter.
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Feliks, a one-year-old eastern imperial eagle from Serbia, arrived back in the country on June 22 aboard a Serbian military transport plane after an eight-month ordeal that included capture by poachers in Syria and a clandestine crossing into Lebanon.
Euronews reported that Feliks began its first migration in August 2025 after being fitted with a transmitter backpack. The bird flew southeast across North Macedonia, Greece and Turkey before its signal disappeared in Syria in late October.
Poachers captured the eagle using desert water traps, nets, shooting or motorcycle chases, then offered it for sale on Syrian WhatsApp groups for illegally trapped birds, according to Michel Sawan of the Lebanese Association for Migratory Birds. The bird was sold to a buyer in Lebanon and resold into Syria before Sawan retrieved it through local contacts without paying smugglers.
A group of refugees carried Feliks in a potato sack across the Nahr al-Kabir river on the Syria-Lebanon border to reach Sawan’s sanctuary in Beirut.
Three subsequent attempts to return the eagle to Serbia failed after the Iran war began in February 2026. Serbian troops serving with the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon arranged the final transport. Feliks is now quarantined for 21 days at a zoo in northern Serbia and will receive a new transmitter before release, Euronews reported.
The eastern imperial eagle has a wingspan of up to 2 meters. Serbia’s breeding population rose from one pair in 2017 to 29 pairs through habitat work by the Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia. “It’s getting worse year after year, season after season, day after day,” Sawan said.
