Cinereous Vulture

Cinereous Vulture: Species Facts

Range & Habitat

The cinereous vulture ranges across the south of the Palearctic, from the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands through north-west Greece, Crimea, the Transcaucasian countries, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and northern India to China, Mongolia and southern Siberia, according to MITECO's atlas entry for the species. In Spain it breeds in the south-western quarter of the peninsula, in Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura and Madrid, and also in the Balearic Islands.^[1]

A tree-nesting vulture. Unlike the griffon, it builds its nests in trees, between 200 and 1,600 m above sea level, in Mediterranean woodland and in cork-oak and holm-oak dehesas, in mountain pine forests and, in the Balearics, on cliffs with Mediterranean vegetation. It breeds in more or less loose colonies and forages mainly over scrub, grassland and dehesa, where it eats sheep, goats and rabbits, according to MITECO's atlas entry. Cabañeros National Park's December 2019 bulletin explains that the female lays a single egg, which both parents incubate for about 60 days; the chick then spends another 110 days in the nest and makes its first flight in mid-September, with a wingspan of almost 3 metres and a weight of about 9 kilos. The bulletin adds that if the weather is very unfavourable at hatching, a small number of chicks die of cold or hunger.^[1][2]

Cabañeros. Cabañeros National Park holds one of the most numerous breeding populations of the species in the world. In the 2022 season, according to the park's bulletin, 281 pairs began incubating and 224 chicks were counted, 24 more than the year before and 9 more than the previous record of 2019, which keeps the colony among the three largest in the world. The park's December 2019 bulletin cites the latest national census, of 2018, as giving a breeding population in Spain of about 3,000 pairs, 964 of them in Extremadura and 508 in Castilla-La Mancha; a little over half of the Castilla-La Mancha pairs, 286 in 2019, were in Cabañeros. According to the Castilla-La Mancha chapter of the national management manual for the species (undated; published around 2009), in that region it bred almost only in the province of Ciudad Real, and the chapter names Cabañeros National Park and its surroundings as one of its three main colonies.^[4][3][2][6]

Earlier figures, for the record: national censuses counted 206 pairs in Spain in 1973, though coverage was incomplete, then 365 in 1986, 774 in 1989 and an estimated 1,027 in 1993. For 2001 MITECO's atlas entry gives 1,358 breeding pairs, with the population estimated at about 1,400, and 140 pairs in the Cabañeros colony. The park counted 216 pairs that began incubation in 2017, of which 187 raised chicks that fledged, and 286 pairs at the start of the 2019 breeding season, a record at that time.^[1][4][2]

Threats

Illegal poisoned bait. MITECO's atlas entry, with data up to 2002, calls the illegal use of poisoned bait to kill predators on small-game hunting estates the species' greatest threat in recent years: more than 400 poisoned cinereous vultures were found between 1990 and 2000. Poisoned bait is illegal, and the use of poison is a crime under article 336 of Spain's Criminal Code, most recently amended by Organic Law 3/2023. Spain's 2024 national strategy against poisoned bait records 336 cinereous vultures found poisoned in 1992–2004, 258 in 2005–2017 and 32 in 2018–2023 (data from 14 regions). It attributes the fall mainly to Andalusia, saying poisoning deaths had held steady in the other regions with important populations, and notes that Spain holds 80–90 % of the European populations of cinereous, Egyptian and griffon vultures.^[1][7]

Poison in Castilla-La Mancha. In the chapter on Castilla-La Mancha of the national management manual for the species, the regional environment department calls poisoning the main cause of non-natural death of the species in the region, despite the use of poison being illegal and prosecuted, including under the Criminal Code. The region approved a Regional Plan against the Illegal Use of Poison in the Wild in August 2005.^[6]

Power lines. The same chapter names power lines, through electrocution and collision with cables, as the other important cause of non-natural death, a residual one but causing losses every year where the vulture is abundant. Castilla-La Mancha's Decreto 5/1999 set rules for overhead electrical installations to protect birds, and in critical areas new lines must carry bird diverters. Nationally, Real Decreto 1432/2008 sets technical rules for high-voltage overhead lines in protection zones to reduce the risk of electrocution and collision for birds.^[6][11]

Disturbance at the nest. MITECO's atlas entry describes the species as sensitive to disturbance in its habitat, such as walkers passing, new roads, tracks and firebreaks, tree felling and forest fires. In Castilla-La Mancha, the regional chapter singles out cork stripping, which in Ciudad Real usually takes place from June onwards and can cause a pair's breeding to fail; it notes that each stand is stripped only about once every ten years, and that cork harvesting also gives owners a reason to protect the cork-oak woodland where the vulture nests.^[1][6]

Food and the sanitary rules on carcasses. MITECO's atlas entry says that the controlled removal of carcasses means an important reduction in available food. The Castilla-La Mancha chapter describes the European rules prohibiting carcasses of domestic and wild ungulates from being left in the wild as a serious conservation problem for the cinereous vulture and the other carrion birds. Spain's Real Decreto 1632/2011 now regulates feeding scavengers, at authorised feeding stations and on extensive farms inside protection zones, where carcasses can be left without being collected first; in 2021 MITECO said this regulation has helped improve the situation of scavenging birds.^[1][6][8][9]

Conservation Status & Work

Aegypius monachus: Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List (global assessment of the species, published in 2021).^[12]

In Spain the cinereous vulture is listed as «Vulnerable» in the Catálogo Español de Especies Amenazadas (Real Decreto 139/2011). It is also «vulnerable» in the Catálogo Regional de Especies Amenazadas de Castilla-La Mancha, created by Decreto 33/1998, and for that reason the region approved its Conservation Plan by Decreto 275/2003.^[10][6][4]

Castilla-La Mancha's Conservation Plan defines the measures needed to remove or reduce the threats to the species and sets out areas of importance and critical areas, which are declared sensitive zones under the region's nature conservation law (Ley 9/1999). According to the regional chapter, it defines 146,571 hectares as Critical Area, where uses and activities are regulated: environmental assessment of their effects on the species, possible limits on forestry work to avoid disturbance during breeding, extra protection on new power lines and a ban on wind farms.^[6]

Work in Cabañeros. Cabañeros National Park carries out continuous scientific monitoring of the breeding populations of its key species, the Spanish imperial eagle and the cinereous vulture, including active protection of critical nesting areas during sensitive periods to avoid human disturbance. The park has counted its breeding population every year, and its bulletins describe steady growth in breeding pairs since Cabañeros was declared a natural park in 1988.^[5][4][2]

Feeding and recovery. MITECO's atlas entry credits the species' recovery, mainly in the 1980s, to legal protection, protection of its breeding habitat, education and awareness campaigns, and feeding stations, which add food and also reduce the risk of poisoning. MITECO's assessment of 2020–2021 places Castilla-La Mancha among the regions whose feeding programmes cover more than 40 % of the scavengers' theoretical food needs. In 2021 MITECO said Spain's feeding rules had even allowed some birds, mostly cinereous and griffon vultures, to be sent to France, Bulgaria, Italy and Israel for reintroduction programmes.^[1][8][9]