Rescued Vultures Saved from Poisoning and Electrocution

A large-scale international effort has successfully addressed the vulture threat and protected endangered vultures along migration routes between Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Egyptian vulture (Neophron Percnopterus) can be shot, poisoned or electrocuted by livestock farmers as they travel through 14 countries each year.

The combination of these threats has reduced the number of breeding pairs in Eastern Europe from 600 in the 1980s to just 50 today.

Since 2012, conservationists working along bird migration routes have been gradually eliminating these threats. In the Balkans, the number of poisoning incidents was halved between 2018 and 2022 by working with farmers to reduce the use of poisonous livestock predator baits eaten by vultures.

The project will also insulate live parts near the perches of more than 10,000 utility poles in countries ranging from Bulgaria to Ethiopia, and the use of vulture body parts substitutes in traditional medicine in Niger and Nigeria. promoted.

In addition, 30 captive-bred vultures were released in Bulgaria, an important breeding area, between 2016 and 2022.

Over the past 10 years, conservation efforts have reduced adult mortality by 2% and juvenile mortality by 9%, and the population has increased by 0.5% annually, according to Steffen Oppel of the Swiss Institute of Ornithology and colleagues.

“Currently, the population is stable with a very small increase,” Oppel says.

The research also benefited other migratory birds that follow the same route as the vultures, including buzzards, eagles and storks.

Oppel and his colleagues sighted thousands of storks (ciconia) Arriving in southern Turkey, many were electrocuted when their wings touched live cables when they landed on utility poles. To avoid this, plastic or rubber covers were used to insulate power cables in areas where conservation teams found large numbers of dead birds.

People are also benefiting, he says. “We have had great success with companies in Bulgaria, for example, and now in Turkey, who have realized that it is in their interests that there will be far fewer interruptions in service if they insulate power lines. It is.”

Any intervention to save vultures is important and the Balkans project has a good chance of success. kelly walter of valpro, a conservation organization in South Africa. “This is an all-out war, and every in-situ and ex-situ conservation intervention and strategy is important to do everything within our means.” [to save the species],” she says.

Southern Africa once had its own breeding population of Egyptian vultures, but they are now extinct.

Flyway funded by the European Union project Egyptian vultures became extinct in the Balkans at the end of 2022, but Oppel says work needs to continue to prevent mortality rates from rising again.

“On the one hand, we want to say, ‘Yes, we have achieved something great because we have successfully avoided the demographic trend of declining immigration,’ but on the other hand, we want to make sure that politicians understand this. You have to let it happen. It’s not fixed forever.”