Re-introduction of the bearded vulture into the European Alps

Summary

The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) was hunted to extinction in the European Alps by the early 20th century. After an early 1970s attempt using wild Afghan birds failed, a new program built a captive breeding stock from 1978, joined the European Endangered species breeding Programme in 1985 involving 35 zoos, and made the first release in 1986 at Austria's Hohe Tauern National Park, later expanding to release sites in France, Italy, and Switzerland. Following IUCN Re-introduction Specialist Group guidelines, the project avoided translocating wild birds from other declining populations and used a modified hacking-back method: naturally reared, never hand-raised, birds were placed in prepared cave sites and fed without human contact until well after fledging, encouraging philopatric site fidelity. Because mature vultures range over tens of thousands of square kilometres and up to 7,500 square kilometres per breeding pair, the project built a multilingual, web-based international monitoring database, gyp-monitoring.com, now holding nearly 40,000 records from observation, telemetry, and genetic analysis across four countries. Reproduction began soon after the first released birds matured, and by the time of reporting about a dozen pairs bred in the wild, with 43 chicks fledged since 1997 and confirmed second-generation breeding. Remaining threats include illegal poison baits linked to wolf recovery, lead poisoning from ungulate carcasses, and collisions with cables. The project rated itself Highly Successful, noting reproductive output now exceeds the release quota and the population continues to grow.