Griffon Vulture

Griffon Vulture: Species Facts

Range & Habitat

The griffon vulture ranges from north-west Africa and southern Europe through Turkey, the Middle East and south-west Asia to Mongolia, according to the Enciclopedia Virtual de los Vertebrados Españoles of Spain's national research council (CSIC, 2016). It lives where there is open country with little tree cover, enough carcasses of wild or domestic hoofed animals, rock cliffs to nest on and weather conditions favourable for flight all year round.^[3]

Colonies and carrion. The species breeds in colonies, though some pairs nest alone; the CSIC encyclopedia records colonies of 2 to 566 pairs. It generally nests on rock, though it can also nest in trees. It feeds mainly on the carcasses of wild and domestic hoofed animals, and vultures are drawn to a carcass by other vultures circling without gaining height and then dropping vertically onto it. A pair generally lays a single egg, incubated for an average of 56 days, and the chick stays in the nest for 110–132 days. In Spain, MITECO's atlas entry for the species says it breeds on cliffs in mountains and river gorges, near open areas with few trees where it looks for food, and is basically sedentary, although young birds range widely and a significant share cross to North Africa and the Sahel.^[3][2]

Spain is the species' European stronghold. The fifth national griffon vulture census, promoted in 2018 by SEO/BirdLife and published in a signed monograph, set the Spanish population at 30,946 pairs, a figure the census authors say should be taken as the minimum present. They estimate the real population at around 30,946–37,134 pairs, or 95,930–122,542 birds. Not every region counted in 2018: La Rioja's count dates from 2014, and Navarre and Álava counted in 2019. Of the 33,832–40,867 pairs estimated in Europe, the same monograph places 90 % in Spain.^[1]

Asturias and Somiedo. The Asturias chapter of the 2018 census, written by staff of the Principado de Asturias's Dirección General de Biodiversidad, found 34 breeding colonies and 12 isolated nests, with 203 pairs detected and a population estimated at no fewer than 235. Because the count was made late in the season, in May, June and July 2018, the authors say the population could have been somewhat underestimated. In Asturias the species is spread mainly over the cliffs above the Cares, Deva and Casaño rivers, the Trubia valley (Santo Adriano, Proaza, Quirós and Teverga) and other rock walls, and includes the known colonies of Somiedo and nearby areas.^[1]

Earlier figures, for the record: the 2018 monograph cites an estimate of only about 2,000 pairs in Spain in the mid-1960s, and the first national census, in 1979, found at least 3,240 pairs. The national censuses that followed counted a minimum of 7,519 pairs in 1989, 17,337 in 1999 and 24,609 in 2008. In Asturias the first estimates were around 20–25 pairs (1986); the 1979 census estimated 15 breeding pairs there, and the 2008 count found 176.^[1]

Threats

Illegal poisoned bait. The introduction to the 2018 census monograph says several thousand griffon vultures still die every year from poisoned bait in the wild and from collisions with wind turbines, and calls these the most pressing threats to the species. Poisoned bait is illegal: 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 the illegal use of poisoned bait notes that Spain holds 80–90 % of the European populations of cinereous vulture, Egyptian vulture and griffon vulture. Poisoned bait already shaped the species' past: the 2018 monograph says that, at the time of the mid-1960s estimate of about 2,000 pairs, it was very probably the main factor limiting the population.^[1][4]

Wind turbines and power lines. The CSIC encyclopedia records high mortality from collision with wind turbines and, to a lesser extent, from poisoning and from collision with power lines. The prologue of the 2018 census says hundreds of griffons die each year on turbine blades. Spain's Real Decreto 1432/2008 sets technical rules for high-voltage overhead lines in designated protection zones to reduce the risk of electrocution and collision for birds.^[3][1][8]

Food and the sanitary rules on carcasses. After bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) appeared in Spain, depositing the carcasses of domestic livestock was prohibited, which the 2018 census monograph calls a great threat to the species. Later rules allowed dead livestock to be left in the field again (EU Regulations 1774/2002 and 142/2011 and, in Spain, Real Decreto 1632/2011), and the population has grown gradually since, though it seems to be levelling off. In 2021 MITECO said this regulation lets farms leave dead sheep or goats uncollected so that scavengers can feed, and that 14 regions had delimited feeding zones for scavenging birds covering 61 % of Spain.^[1][6]

A veterinary drug. The 2018 census monograph warned that a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug for livestock, which had caused the loss of 99 % of five vulture species in South Asia, was then still authorised in Spain. No vulture deaths from it had been recorded in Spain by then, but the monograph considered its authorisation a serious potential risk for Spain's four vulture species.^[1]

Weather and a slowing population. Rain matters to breeding: the 2018 census authors say the especially wet spring of 2018 may have affected breeding results. National productivity fell from 0.65 chicks per pair in 1989 to 0.56 in 2018, and the prologue of the monograph suggests the population may be slowly approaching the carrying capacity of the ecosystem, and that the falling breeding figures could be a sign of growing difficulty in raising chicks as densities rise and competition for food increases.^[1]

Conservation Status & Work

Gyps fulvus: Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (global assessment of the species, published in 2021).^[9]

In Spain the griffon vulture is included in the Listado de Especies Silvestres en Régimen de Protección Especial (Real Decreto 139/2011), which gives it legal protection nationwide, but it is not listed in any threat category of the Catálogo Español de Especies Amenazadas. According to the 2018 census monograph, it does not appear in the regional catalogue of Asturias. The EU Birds Directive includes it in Annex I.^[7][1]

Feeding scavengers by law. Real Decreto 1632/2011 regulates feeding wild scavengers with animal by-products: delimiting protection zones for their feeding, feeding at authorised feeding stations, and leaving carcasses on extensive farms inside those zones without collecting them first. MITECO's assessment of its application in 2020–2021 lists Asturias among the 14 regions that have approved and published their protection zones, and says the considerable amount of food supplied in Asturias in the 2021 campaign put it at the head of the regions in how far it covers the scavengers' food needs.^[5]

Action against poison. Spain's national strategy against the illegal use of poisoned bait in the wild was approved by the Conferencia Sectorial de Medio Ambiente on 24 July 2024, replacing the strategy of 2004.^[4]

Monitoring by census. Griffon vultures have been counted in national censuses each decade since 1979, promoted and coordinated by SEO/BirdLife with growing involvement of the regional environment departments and hundreds of volunteers; the fifth was carried out in 2018. In Asturias the 2018 count covered every colony known from 2008 and every site with later reports of possible breeding, 62 sites in all, and six colonies were followed closely, three in the east and three in the centre of the region: 74 pairs began incubation and 57 chicks fledged, a breeding success of 0.77.^[1]