On the first Saturday of September each year we pay tribute to these birds so important for biodiversity on International Vulture Day.

On the first Saturday of September each year we pay tribute to these birds so important for biodiversity on International Vulture Day. This event has been celebrated since 2006 with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of vultures as a whole for ecosystems and making visible different factors that threaten their situation worldwide, including collisions with wind turbines or electrical infrastructures, poisoned baits or the degradation of their habitat.

Vultures are a group of ecologically vital birds that provide critical ecosystem services such as cleaning up the environment by consuming carrion and other organic waste from the environment, a situation that, if not done, would benefit the spread of disease in both wild and domestic animals and could increase pathogen risks to humans.

Globally, there are 23 species of vultures, of which 16 are threatened and included in the IUCN red list. Spain has 90% of the vulture populations in the European Union and is home to 4 species: the bearded vulture (Gyapetus barbatus), the griffon vulture (fulvus), the Egyptian vulture (Neoprhon pernopterus) and the black vulture (Aegypius monachus).

Along these lines, the Biodiversity Foundation has supported more than 20 projects that carry out various actions through our calls for grants, which directly or indirectly help to improve the status of this species. To this end, we have allocated nearly 800,000 euros to these initiatives, of which two of them are currently being executed.

In this way, the Rural Nature Association develops “Consolidation of the black vulture colony in the Catalan Pyrenees and dispersion to new territories in Aragon”, a project that focuses on the reintroduction of this bird that disappeared in the Pyrenees in the nineteenth century. Currently, with 50 specimens in the colony and 12 breeding pairs, all in the Boumort SPA, the entity sees it possible that the next step will be the expansion of the colony to nearby territories in Aragon and Catalonia. In addition, other actions that are contemplated include increasing the supplementary feeding points of the species and improving habitats to facilitate the expansion of the colony towards the Aragonese Pyrenees.

For its part, the Nature and Man Foundation (FNYH) is working on the project “Club de Fincas, a tool for the promotion of Land Stewardship and the protection of habitats linked to the pasture”, an initiative that, among other awareness-raising and dissemination actions, aims to act on priority habitats and carry out monitoring actions on wild species such as the black vulture and the black stork.