The national conservation status of the globally threatened Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus) in Armenia was last updated in 2009, and there is an obvious need to revise it. The data collected in 2022-2024 show that there are 39-43 breeding pairs of Egyptian Vulture in Armenia, while its population trend declined by 25% in the years between 2003-2024 (p<0.01), which equals a decrease of 48% in 40 years (three generations of the species). The Area of Occupancy is 976 km(2), and the Extent of Occurrence is 19,024 km2. The species' national conservation status is marginal between the categories of Vulnerable and Endangered; however, the existing conservation measures remain insufficient for either category. To improve the status of the species, it is necessary to mitigate hazardous waste management policy, to secure proper Environmental Impact Assessments of construction and other developments in the buffer zones of known nests, and to restrict outdoor activities, including drone filming or photography in the same buffer zones in the breeding season, to review the policy on burial of dead cattle, and to study the influence of electric infrastructure on Egyptian Vultures. The implementation of conservation measures should be accompanied by continuous monitoring with minimum disturbance.

Intra‐Africa movements of most African migratory birds remain an enigma. We describe the migrations of Wahlberg's eagle Hieraaetus wahlbergi using GPS‐GSM transmitters on adult eagles in their South African (n = 3) and Kenyan (n = 7) breeding areas between 2018 and 2022. The dataset included 57 migratory tracks, 29 post‐breeding and 28 pre‐breeding. We found long‐distance migrants (LDMs; from South Africa) and short‐distance migrants (SDMs; from Kenya) using common non‐breeding areas centered in the Sudans and Central African Republic. The timing of annual phases was similar, but LDMs departed on their pre‐breeding migration on average later than SDMs (13 August versus 31 July) and arrived later on their breeding grounds (13 September versus 10 August). Conversely, the average departure date on the post‐breeding migration was 4 April for SDM and 23 March for LDMs. LDMs spent significantly less time of the year than SDMs on breeding grounds (44 versus 57%), and slightly but not significantly more time (40 versus 38%) on non‐breeding areas. The post‐breeding migration distance was on average 3413.9 ± 170.9 km for LDMs and 491.9 ± 158.5 km for SDMs. At non‐breeding areas, LDMs reached more northerly latitudes than SDMs, increasing the pre‐breeding migration distance to 4495.9 ± 372.5 km for LDMs versus 1701.9 ± 167.3 for SDMs. Daily flight distances back to the breeding areas averaged 153.4 ± 130.3 km for LDMs and 167.4 ± 122.3 km for SDMs and to non‐breeding areas were shorter for SDMs (124.8 ± 113.0 km) than LDMs (178.0 ± 134.4 km). Migration speed was similar across populations and for pre‐ and post‐breeding migrations. LDMs used more stopover days than SDMs. We conclude that Wahlberg's eagles from different parts of Africa have adapted their migration to differences in timing of the breeding season, distance of travel, and resources in the landscapes encountered during migration.

The ecosystem services framework is essential for biodiversity conservation, emphasizing the role of nature in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study offers a global view on vulture-associated ecosystem services and their SDG contributions, based on insights from 206 experts. The findings reveal global consensus on the importance of vultures in regulation and maintenance services, such as waste recycling and disease control. Cultural services attributed to vultures are moderate and vary regionally. Provisioning services are consistently rated low across all regions. Experts' views on vultures' key ecosystem roles are often biased toward well-known services and may not align with all scientific evidence. The study emphasizes vultures' role in achieving SDGs, particularly impacting life on land and health, and calls for reevaluating their contribution to sustainable practices. It stresses the need to customize conservation to regional values and perceptions, recognizing vultures' critical role in ecological balance, public health, and sustainable development.

The conversion of natural habitats to farmland is a major cause of biodiversity loss and poses the greatest extinction risk to birds worldwide. Tropical raptors are of particular concern, being relatively slow-breeding apex predators and scavengers, whose disappearance can trigger extensive cascading effects. Many of Africa’s raptors are at considerable risk from habitat conversion, prey-base depletion and persecution, driven principally by human population expansion. Here we describe multiregional trends among 42 African raptor species, 88% of which have declined over a ca. 20–40-yr period, with 69% exceeding the International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria classifying species at risk of extinction. Large raptors had experienced significantly steeper declines than smaller species, and this disparity was more pronounced on unprotected land. Declines were greater in West Africa than elsewhere, and more than twice as severe outside of protected areas (PAs) than within. Worryingly, species suffering the steepest declines had become significantly more dependent on PAs, demonstrating the importance of expanding conservation areas to cover 30% of land by 2030—a key target agreed at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity COP15. Our findings also highlight the significance of a recent African-led proposal to strengthen PA management—initiatives considered fundamental to safeguarding global biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and climate resilience.

Human-induced direct mortality affects huge numbers of birds each year, threatening hundreds of species worldwide. Tracking technologies can be an important tool to investigate temporal and spatial patterns of bird mortality as well as their drivers. We compiled 1704 mortality records from tracking studies across the African-Eurasian flyway for 45 species, including raptors, storks, and cranes, covering the period from 2003 to 2021. Our results show a higher frequency of human-induced causes of mortality than natural causes across taxonomic groups, geographical areas, and age classes. Moreover, we found that the frequency of human-induced mortality remained stable over the study period. From the human-induced mortality events with a known cause (n = 637), three main causes were identified: electrocution (40.5 %), illegal killing (21.7 %), and poisoning (16.3 %). Additionally, combined energy infrastructure-related mortality (i.e., electrocution, power line collision, and wind-farm collision) represented 49 % of all human-induced mortality events. Using a random forest model, the main predictors of human-induced mortality were found to be taxonomic group, geographic location (latitude and longitude), and human footprint index value at the location of mortality. Despite conservation efforts, human drivers of bird mortality in the African-Eurasian flyway do not appear to have declined over the last 15 years for the studied group of species. Results suggest that stronger conservation actions to address these threats across the flyway can reduce their impacts on species. In particular, projected future development of energy infrastructure is a representative example where application of planning, operation, and mitigation measures can enhance bird conservation.

Nature’s contribution to people (i.e. ecosystem services) is becoming integral to conservation science and policy, yet our knowledge is restricted to only a few services and taxa. Vultures (family: Accipitridae and Cathartidae), most of which are threatened with extinction, have been touted for delivering regulation and maintenance services via their capacity to rapidly consume organic matter. As such, their appellation as “nature’s clean-up crew” has become very popular. However, a comprehensive evaluation of the supporting evidence for such appellation was absent from the published literature. We performed a systematic review and evidence assessment to quantify the global contribution of vultures towards over 20 ecosystem services and disservices. Our analysis determined a critical imbalance in the scope and focus of published research. In contrast to the birds’ popularised image as cleaners of the environment, we found only weak evidence to support any regulation and maintenance services for vultures. Moreover, studies on regulation and maintenance disservices were prominent. The only ecosystem services supported by strong evidence were cultural, although even these were evidenced by a limited number of studies. Finally, we unveil major knowledge gaps in the ecosystem service and disservice literature on a taxonomic and spatial scale related to vultures. Our analysis highlights the urgent need to quantify the net contribution of vultures to people.

Protected areas are intended as tools in reducing threats to wildlife and preserving habitat for their long-term population persistence. Studies on ranging behavior provide insight into the utility of protected areas. Vultures are one of the fastest declining groups of birds globally and are popular subjects for telemetry studies, but continent-wide studies are lacking. To address how vultures use space and identify the areas and location of possible vulture safe zones, we assess home range size and their overlap with protected areas by species, age, breeding status, season, and region using a large continent-wide telemetry datasets that includes 163 individuals of three species of threatened Gyps vulture. Immature vultures of all three species had larger home ranges and used a greater area outside of protected areas than breeding and non-breeding adults. Cape vultures had the smallest home range sizes and the lowest level of overlap with protected areas. Ruppell's vultures had larger home range sizes in the wet season, when poisoning may increase due to human-carnivore conflict. Overall, our study suggests challenges for the creation of Vulture Safe Zones to protect African vultures. At a minimum, areas of 24,000 km2 would be needed to protect the entire range of an adult African White-backed vulture and areas of more than 75,000 km2 for wider-ranging Ruppell's vultures. Vulture Safe Zones in Africa would generally need to be larger than existing protected areas, which would require widespread conservation activities outside of protected areas to be successful.

The Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybrida) is little studied in southern Africa. In Zambia, it is primarily found in the south and west of the country, where the Barotse Floodplain and Kafue Flats are known to contain substantial numbers of terns. Although the species is common in Liuwa Plain National Park, there are no high counts. While in Liuwa in July 2021, we observed over 1,600 Whiskered Terns at a nocturnal roost, which was located on floating vegetation in the middle of a pan. In June 2022 we observed three large nocturnal roosts ranging from 400–725 terns as well as large early morning movements of as many as 850 terns dispersing towards floodplains outside Liuwa. Our observation in 2021 represents one of the highest concentrations of Whiskered Terns recorded in southern Africa and those in 2022 suggest terns may commute tens of kilometers to forage during the day but return to Liuwa to roost communally.

African wildlife face challenges from many stressors including current and emerging contaminants, habitat and resource loss, poaching, intentional and unintentional poisoning, and climate‐related environmental change. The plight of African vultures exemplifies these challenges due to environmental contaminants and other stressors acting on individuals and populations that are already threatened or endangered. Many of these threats emanate from increasing human population size and settlement density, habitat loss from changing land use for agriculture, residential areas, and industry, and climate‐related changes in resource availability. Environmental chemicals that are hazardous include legacy chemicals, emerging chemicals of concern, and high‐volume‐use chemicals that are employed as weed killers and in other agricultural applications. Furthermore, there are differences in risk for species living in close proximity to humans or in areas affected by habitat loss, climate, and industry. Monitoring programs are essential to track the status of nesting pairs, offspring survival, longevity, and lifetime productivity. This is important for long‐lived birds, such as vultures, that may be especially vulnerable to chronic exposure to chemicals as obligate scavengers. Furthermore, their position in the food web may increase risk due to biomagnification of chemicals. We review the primary chemical hazards to Old World vultures and the interacting stressors affecting these and other birds. Habitat is a major consideration for vultures, with tree‐nesters and cliff‐nesters potentially experiencing different risks of exposure to environmental chemicals. The present review provides information from long‐term monitoring programs and discusses a range of these threats and their effects on vulture populations. Environ Toxicol Chem 2022;41:1586–1603. © 2022 SETAC

Abstract. We initiated a telemetry study on the Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis) in western Zambia in 2019 to address knowledge gaps about spatial ecology. As the first such field study on the species, we encountered multiple challenges in attempting to capture free-ranging storks, including limitations in manpower and trapping techniques. In three field trips, we captured and deployed transmitters on only three storks. All transmitters have since failed, and the longest one transmitted data was for only five months, during which we recorded a dispersal event into Angola and back to its natal area. Our work has painstakingly demonstrated that field techniques are not always transferable between species and study systems, and that initiating work on an unstudied species has unforeseen difficulties.

Vulture and condor populations have declined dramatically due to consumption of livestock contaminated with pharmaceuticals, secondary poisoning from lead ammunition, retaliatory poisoning from loss of livestock, the use of vulture body parts for religious practices, and fatal interactions with electrical infrastructure. The Asian and African vulture crises have stimulated research and conservation actions including a comprehensive Multispecies Action Plan for African-Eurasian Vultures that provides a blueprint for conservation action. However, research and conservation efforts for vultures are fraught with challenges at political, continental, and grassroots levels. These challenges span national and international borders and encompass continental differences in the impacts to specific species of raptors as well as other wildlife. Yet there are reports of increasing numbers and potential solutions involving international collaborations and consortia. At the 2019 Raptor Research Foundation meeting, we convened a special symposium to address the conservation and viability of vulture populations, with attention to the critical role of vultures in maintaining ecosystem health as related to human communities and sustaining wildlife. This special issue of the Journal of Raptor Research grew out of that symposium and details some of the underlying challenges that have resulted in vultures being the most threatened group of birds globally. With the goals of highlighting challenges that researchers and conservationists face and sharing success stories, this symposium also encompassed interdisciplinary perspectives, which are critical for making informed management and policy decisions. Speakers addressed socioenvironmental factors, poaching and trafficking, and data on trends that are critical to developing current policies. The human factor—a powerful driver in the humanwildlife-ecosystem relationship—was also considered, along with approaches to organize information, and understand interrelated outcomes. The last five years has seen a significant increase in the number of published papers focused on the conservation of vultures globally, especially the impact and mitigation of the major threats such as poisoning and electrical infrastructure, the identification of key geographical areas of conservation importance, and the assessment of the ecosystem service provided by vultures to the environment and humanity. The manuscripts contained in this special issue of the Journal of Raptor Research span most of the numerous topics described above, and all are pertinent to the ecology and conservation of condors and vultures (Old World and New World). These contributions provide insights into the environment and challenges facing vulture and condor populations in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The range of topics includes (1) role of vultures in ecosystem health (van den Heever et al. 2021); (2) breeding success of wild Cape Vultures (Gyps coprotheres; Goikantswemang et al. 2021) and foster parenting success of captive California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus; Granthon et al. 2021);

One Health brings the powerful interrelationship between human and wildlife health together with ecosystem health. The initial concept of One Health was formulated decades ago and focused on disease transfer from wildlife to human populations. More recently, the concept has been used to associate resilience to disease with the health of the ecosystem and resilience to environmental stressors. The need for a One Health approach is particularly evident in the plight of Old World vultures, which are facing a conservation crisis due to drastic reductions in populations across their entire range. Moreover, vulture conservation exemplifies many contemporary tenets of One Health; vultures are critical to a sustainable and resilient ecosystem, which in turn is essential for the socio-ecological health of human communities. In this review, we examine the complex factors contributing to the demise of Old World vulture populations, using the lens of One Health to conceptualize the primary drivers impacting the health and sustainability of these populations. The One Health concept provides the basis for the development of a framework that incorporates a multidimensional approach and includes human health, wildlife health, environmental and disease-related stressors, disease incidences, societal pressures, and environmental contaminants. Integrating societal needs with management aimed at maintaining healthy vulture populations is key for successfully using a One Health framework to optimize the health of human and wildlife populations and ensure ecosystem health.

Vultures and condors are among the most threatened avian species in the world due to the impacts of human activities. Negative perceptions can contribute to these threats as some vulture species have been historically blamed for killing livestock. This perception of conflict has increased in recent years, associated with a viral spread of partial and biased information through social media and despite limited empirical support for these assertions. Here, we highlight that magnifying infrequent events of livestock being injured by vultures through publically shared videos or biased news items negatively impact efforts to conserve threatened populations of avian scavengers. We encourage environmental agencies, researchers, and practitioners to evaluate the reliability, frequency, and context of reports of vulture predation, weighing those results against the diverse and valuable contributions of vultures to environmental health and human well‐being. We also encourage the development of awareness campaigns and improved livestock management practices, including commonly available nonlethal deterrence strategies, if needed. These actions are urgently required to allow the development of a more effective conservation strategy for vultures worldwide.

Energy infrastructure, particularly for wind power, is rapidly expanding in Africa, creating the potential for conflict with at-risk wildlife populations. Raptor populations are especially susceptible to negative impacts of fatalities from wind energy because individuals tend to be long-lived and reproduce slowly. A major determinant of risk of collision between flying birds and wind turbines is the altitude above ground at which a bird flies. We examine 18,710 observations of flying raptors recorded in southern Africa and we evaluate, for 49 species, the frequency with which they were observed to fly at the general height of a wind turbine rotor-swept zone (50–150 m). Threatened species, especially vultures, were more likely to be observed at turbine height than were other species, suggesting that these raptors are most likely to be affected by wind power development across southern Africa. Our results highlight that threatened raptor species, particularly vultures, might be especially impacted by expanded wind energy infrastructure across southern Africa.