SmartBirds
A few days ago, we received alarming news from thousands of kilometres away – one of the young Egyptian Vultures released as part of the species reinforcement programme in Bulgaria has died in its wintering area in western Yemen.
The bird was named Kushka and belonged to the Class of 2025 of our “Egyptian Vulture School” in Bulgaria. She was taken by a BSPB team from a wild nest in Bulgaria due to her late hatching and was hand-reared at the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Breeding Centre – Green Balkans.
Photo: Volen Arkumarev
The signal from her GPS transmitter showed no movement for hours, which is almost a certain sign of death. Due to the serious security problems linked to the civil war in Yemen, the area is extremely difficult to access, and at first, it seemed that we would never learn what had happened to the young vulture.
However, a few days later, something unexpected happened. Our team received a message via WhatsApp from a local person who had found the bird and searched for the phone number written on the transmitter. After a long conversation in Arabic, with the help of Google Translate, we were able to reconstruct the details of the tragic incident.
According to his account, a local farmer had laced the carcass of a goat with poison, aiming to kill stray dogs that were causing damage to his livestock. As a result, at least five Egyptian Vultures of different ages were poisoned, including Kushka. The local man also sent us a photograph showing the carcasses of two additional Egyptian Vultures.
According to the eyewitness, the use of poisons to control predators is a common practice in the area. While some people rely on direct shooting, many livestock owners resort to poisoned baits without realising the serious risks this poses not only to wildlife, but also to their own health and their livestock.
Photo: local resident from western Yemen
This part of Yemen is a key wintering area for Egyptian Vultures. In addition to birds from the Balkans, a significant number of vultures from Eastern Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia also winter here, making poisoning a serious threat to entire populations along the migratory flyway.
The death of Kushka is a heavy loss for the conservation efforts for the Egyptian Vulture in Bulgaria. Thanks to the responsiveness and courage of the local person, however, we have obtained extremely valuable information about the real threats migratory birds face in one of the least studied and most inaccessible regions of their wintering range.
This tragedy once again shows that poisoned baits know no borders – they kill not only the intended “target” animals, but also rare and protected species whose survival depends on long-term international cooperation and responsibility.
The Egyptian Vulture population reinforcement programme in Bulgaria is implemented by the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds in close cooperation with Green Balkans and the EAZA Ex-situ Programme (EEP) for the species, coordinated by Antonín Vaidl from Prague Zoo. We express our sincere gratitude to Jerez Zoo, Prague Zoo, the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Breeding Centre – Green Balkans, Sofia Zoo, Zlín Zoo, Schönbrunn Zoo and Ostrava Zoo, and their dedicated staff for their tireless efforts to breed Egyptian Vultures under controlled conditions.
Conservation activities for the Egyptian Vulture are also supported through the project “The Green Belt of Southeast Bulgaria”, funded by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme (ELSP), managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative – a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and leading international conservation organisations. The University of Cambridge and the Endangered Landscapes Programme are supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing.
