{"id":417784,"date":"2026-01-20T01:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T01:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/417784\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T01:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T01:47:09","slug":"sylvan-heights-bird-park-welcomes-endangered-brazilian-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/417784\/","title":{"rendered":"Sylvan Heights Bird Park welcomes endangered Brazilian ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">SCOTLAND NECK, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; A wildlife park in Eastern Carolina has been selected to care for an endangered duck species from Brazil.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Sylvan Heights Bird Park is one of only two sanctuaries outside Brazil to welcome the elusive Brazilian Mergansers, along with Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The species is considered one of the most critically endangered ducks in the world, with an estimated total of only 50 to 250.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Park officials attribute the decline to worsening water quality in rivers and streams, which is often caused by agricultural practices, soil erosion, and building dams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe Brazilian Merganser is a species on the brink,\u201d says Dr. Dustin Foote, Director of Aviculture at Sylvan Heights Bird Park. \u201cHowever, there\u2019s a really great group of people and organizations that have been working together to help safeguard this species from extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Potential breeding pairs were sent to both parks to increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCOTLAND NECK, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; A wildlife park in Eastern Carolina has been selected to care for an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[199800,199801,199802,199803,64548,2233,7224,183273,192,199805,2255,2256,79,199804,199799,64925],"class_list":["post-417784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-bird-park","tag-brazilian","tag-brazilian-bird","tag-brazilian-birds","tag-duck","tag-ducks","tag-endangered","tag-endangered-birds","tag-environment","tag-halifax-county","tag-nc","tag-north-carolina","tag-science","tag-scotland-neck","tag-sylvan-heights-bird-park","tag-witn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}