{"id":36090,"date":"2026-04-15T10:43:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T07:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/historic-success-for-bulgarian-wildlife-cinereous-vultures-breed-again-in-rhodope-mountains-rewilding-landscape-after-33-years\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T14:07:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T11:07:27","slug":"historic-success-for-bulgarian-wildlife-cinereous-vultures-breed-again-in-rhodope-mountains-rewilding-landscape-after-33-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/historic-success-for-bulgarian-wildlife-cinereous-vultures-breed-again-in-rhodope-mountains-rewilding-landscape-after-33-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic success for Bulgarian wildlife: Cinereous vultures breed again in Rhodope Mountains rewilding landscape after 33 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Photo: \u00a9 Anton Stamenov<\/em><\/p>\n<p>An exceptionally important conservation success has been recorded in the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area \u2013 three pairs of Cinereous vultures have successfully hatched chicks, marking the species\u2019 return as a breeding bird in the Bulgarian part of the Rhodope Mountains after more than three decades of absence.<\/p>\n<p>The good news was confirmed around Easter, when our monitoring team observed and documented the newly hatched chicks at the nests. The last confirmed nesting of the cinereous vulture in the region dates back to 1993, making this event historic for Bulgarian nature.<\/p>\n<p>The reintroduction of the species in the area was initiated in 2022 by the BSPB, the Rewilding Rhodopes Foundation, the Spanish organization GREFA, and Rewilding Europe, and so far 40 birds have been released into the wild.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEfforts are already yielding visible results \u2013 this year, 8 pairs have been recorded in the Bulgarian part of the Eastern Rhodopes, 7 of which have occupied artificial nests built by conservation teams. Of these pairs, 4 began incubation, but only 3 were successful,\u201d commented project leader Dr. Dobromir Dobrev from BSPB.<\/p>\n<p>Following the recovery of griffon vulture populations in Bulgaria, the return of the once-extinct cinereous vulture to the Rhodopes represents another major conservation achievement. The cinereous vulture is the largest vulture species found in Europe. It feeds exclusively on carrion. In addition to their vital role as nature\u2019s \u201cclean-up crew,\u201d vultures are also an attractive draw for tourists visiting the Eastern Rhodopes from Bulgaria and abroad.<\/p>\n<p>The reintroduction activities are carried out within the LIFE project \u201cThe Return of the Cinereous Vultures to the Rhodopes,\u201d coordinated by the\u00a0Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds,\u00a0in partnership with local conservation organizations. The project is co-funded by the\u00a0European Union\u2019s LIFE Programme\u00a0and\u00a0Rewilding Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo: \u00a9 Anton Stamenov An exceptionally important conservation success has been recorded in the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area \u2013 three pairs of Cinereous vultures have successfully hatched chicks, marking the species\u2019 return as a breeding bird in the Bulgarian part of the Rhodope Mountains after more than three decades of absence. The good news was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":36095,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"class_list":["post-36090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36090"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bspb.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=36090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}