Vulture food resource management

Focal species: bearded vulture, Cinereous vulture, Egyptian vulture, griffon vulture
Secondary species: Bonelli's eagle, Golden eagle, short-toed eagle
Countries: France
Name of organisation: LPO France
Support requested:
contributions for specific items >1000 euro,
contributions to running of project <1000 euro,
materials
Does this project benefit local people through employment and/or capacity building: yes
Does this project benefit local people in other ways: The livestock farmers who decide to have their own rendering plot can benefit from a tax reduction for their carcass disposal service. Vultures resume their position as natural renderers. Especially in moutainous areas, many farms have difficult access so vultures are more efficient than the public rendering service. Being an emblematic species, it's also a real tourist attraction and an opportunity for the local tourism industry who can offer activities linked to this species.

Project Description

Vulture populations in the Grands Causses are closely linked to the availability of food ressources which is reliant on the activity of pastoral livestock being upheld. But, the number of livestock farmers is decreasing significantly, intensive farming is becoming more widespread and the public rendering service has become industrialised. These factors have reduced food ressource availability for vultures . For many years in the Massif Central, LPO Grands Causses has been working to maintain the food ressource availabilty that is required to sustain the vulture populations present here. This is being carried out through various actions: 1)Historic establishment of a collective feeding station “Charnier de Cassagne” set up during the first griffon vulture reintroduction. LPO Grands Causses provide locally a rendering service to aliment this, and another, feeding station. 2) Creation support for authorised individual feeding platforms run by livestock farmers themselves. These platforms are extremely important for maintaining a strong relationship between farmers and vultures who recover their natural role as renderers. 3) Specific feeding platform implementation for bearded vulture and cinereous vulture. This approach relies on the interspecific competition hypothesis about food accessibility between Griffon vulture and the other scavengers. Meat and bone is placed at selected sites suitable for both species. LPO Grands Causses monitors the efficiency of these specific platforms by using camera traps which also allows identification of individuals of each species through leg ring readings.