Ten years ago the Egyptian Vulture population in eastern Europe was in freefall, because too many birds were killed by human activities wherever they went along their migratory journeys. By expanding conservation efforts across three continents, conservationists have now shown that even such globetrotting species can be rescued. Steffen Oppel explains in a new paper published recently.
Egyptian vulture in flight (c) Paul Donald
Many migratory species across the world are threatened. Life is inherently risky when the annual routine involves journeys of thousands of kilometers across many political borders, with the risk of getting shot in one country, poisoned in another, and electrocuted in the remaining dozen countries that are crossed on the way to more benign wintering climates.
Conservationists often despair when they are faced with the plight of migratory species. With enormous effort a species can be protected in either its breeding or wintering areas, but those efforts come to nothing if the carefully protected birds then vanish during migration in other parts of the world.
The Egyptian Vulture, Europe´s smallest and only migratory vulture, is a typical example of a threatened migratory species: in eastern Europe the population plummeted from >600 pair in the 1980s to ~50 pairs in 2018, with many threats along the entire flyway from Europe via the Middle East to Africa contributing to the decline. Since 2010, conservation managers in Bulgaria and Greece tried to save the Balkan breeding population, but until 2018 the population continued to decrease.
An ambitious project funded by the European Union then expanded the work across the flyway, involving 16 organisations across three continents. A new paper in the journal Animal Conservation published this week now shows that the population in the Balkans has stabilized since the conservation work was expanded from Europe to the Middle East and Africa.
Led by conservationists from the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds/BirdLife Bulgaria, the project team reduced the risk of poisoning, electrocution, and direct persecution in 14 countries along the flyway, and initiated a species reinforcement programme in the Balkans by releasing captive-bred individuals donated by a network of European Zoos.
EgyptianVulture on power line (c) Andras Kovacs
The RSPB provided the scientific advice what activities to prioritise in which country, and evaluated the monitoring data to assess the changes that occurred as a consequence of this work: the annual mortality rate of Egyptian Vultures decreased by 2% for adult birds and by 9% for juveniles. Although these changes seem minuscule, they had an encouraging effect: since 2018 the Egyptian Vulture population on the Balkans has not decreased further but remained stable around 50 breeding pairs.
Arresting the decline of a threatened migratory bird species is a major success, but the team cannot rest on its laurels just yet. Much of the success requires ongoing work to remove poison from the countryside, to reduce the illegal killing of birds, and to manage the ever-expanding network of poorly designed powerlines that function as death traps for birds. Persistent efforts to reduce these threats are necessary along the entire flyway to facilitate the recovery of the population, and funding is sorely needed to sustain these efforts. However, for once there is a glimmer of hope that with a large team of dedicated people working at truly intercontinental scales, even species that migrate thousands of kilometers can potentially be rescued – a feat that seemed impossible only a few years ago.
Continue reading
Would you like to be kept up to date with our latest science news? Email with the heading 'enewsletter' to be added to our quarterly enewsletter.
Want our blogs emailed to you automatically? Click the cog in the top right of this page and select 'turn blog notifications on' (if you have an RSPB blog account) or 'subscribe by email'.