130925-studie-wildlife-comeback-in-europe

Distribution in Europe
The Bearded vulture is widely distributed in
mountainous regions in Eurasia and Africa, with
a small proportion of its global range in Europe.
Although the global population of the species is
not concentrated in Europe [6] , the Bearded vulture
is one of the most emblematic species of the large
Eurasian mountain ranges. The species currently
breeds in Austria, France, Greece (Crete), Italy,
Spain, and Switzerland [7] , and it also occurs in
Turkey and the Caucasus.
Habitat preferences
The Bearded vulture nests on cliffs in mountain
ranges at 400–2000 m above sea level and has
a rather large territory – between 100 and 500
square kilometres [8] . It forages over montane and
sub-alpine vegetation, mostly above 1000 m, where
both domestic and wild ungulates occur. Where
available, the species may also visit feeding stations.
The diet of the Bearded vulture consists mostly
of bone marrow (up to 85% of diet), especially from
the extremities of sheep and goat, but flesh is
also taken from dead animals including chamois,
marmot, sheep, goat, moufflon, ibex, rabbit and
pigs (domestic and wild) [9, 10] . If bones are too big to
swallow in one piece, Bearded vultures carry them
into the air and let them drop onto rocks below,
to break them. Small animals (birds and rodents),
or meat of larger ones, are fed to chicks, forming
an important part of their diet. As bones contain
almost no water, Bearded vultures feeding mainly
on marrow need to have access to water.
Legal protection and conservation status
The species is listed in Annex I of the EU Birds
Directive, in Annex III of the Bern Convention, in
Annex II of the Convention on Migratory Species
and in Appendix II of CITES [11] .
Abundance:
current status and changes
The current European breeding population of
Bearded vulture is quite small (200 pairs; Table
2) and was mostly stable during 1970–1990. Since
1999, the European populations show a recovery
(Figure 1). The population in the Pyrenees (Spain
and France) is increasing [15, 16] , as is the reintroduced
population in the Alps (Austria, France, Italy and
Switzerland), which comprised 22 breeding pairs
in 2013 [17, 18] . The two small island populations have
contrasting trends, with the population in Crete
(Greece) slightly increasing in the last decade [19]
and that in Corsica (France) slowly decreasing [20] – it
now numbers only 10 individuals.
No. of breeding pairs
250
200
150
100
50
0
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Distribution:
current status and changes
2005
Human persecution and poisoning caused a
reduction in numbers or extinction of the species
across most of Europe at the end of the 19 th and
beginning of the 20 th centuries [23, 24] . After its extirpation
from the Alps at the beginning of the 20 th
century [25, 26] , extinction continued in other regions.
The species was exterminated from Germany (1855),
Switzerland (1884), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1893),
Austria (1906), Italy (1913) [27] , Romania (1935), Czechoslovakia
(1942), Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro)
(1956) [28] , Bulgaria (1966) [29] , Andalucía (1980s) [30]
and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
(1990) [31, 32] . It disappeared from mainland Greece in
the early 2000s [19, 33] .
The distribution of the species in western and
southern Europe was reduced to the mountains
of the Pyrenees (France and Spain), Crete (Greece)
and Corsica [34] . The species now breeds only
in Andorra (regions of Navarra, Aragón and
Cataluña, all in the Pyrenees) and Andalucía in
Spain, in France (Pyrenees, Corsica and the Alps),
Switzerland, Austria and Italy (Alps only) and
Greece (Crete).
Figure 1.
Estimated number
of Bearded vulture
breeding pairs in
Europe.
Table 2.
Numbers of Bearded
vulture breeding pairs
in each country in
Europe in 2010–2012
according to recent
data [13, 15, 21] .
Countries No. of breeding pairs Trend %
Austria 2 + 1
France 46 + 23
Greece 6–7 Stable 3
Italy 6 + 3
Spain 134 + 67
Switzerland 5 + 3
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
229