Vultures: From Misunderstood Outcasts to Silent Guardians

A life built slowly

To understand the Griffon Vulture’s vulnerability, we must look at the way it lives. The female normally lays only one egg. For almost two months — around 53 to 54 days — the male and female take turns incubating it. After hatching, the chick remains in the nest for nearly four more months before taking its first flight. Its parents continue to accompany and feed it for a while afterwards. A young vulture cannot breed until it is several years old. Such slowness would be a disadvantage for a short-lived species. But the Griffon Vulture can live a very long time: birds around thirty years old have been observed in the wild.

Those who make the dead disappear

Their meals are not very appealing to us. Yet they are essential. Vultures are specialised scavengers: they feed mainly on animals that are already dead. By consuming carcasses quickly, they help recycle organic matter and prevent it from remaining in the landscape for long. This work is tangible enough to be measured. In the Verdon region, for example, the LPO works with livestock farmers who make certain animals lost from their herds available to vultures as part of a natural rendering programme. In 2025, almost 3,000 carcasses, representing around 150 to 200 tonnes, were recycled in this way. What might seem to be no more than a meal therefore becomes a genuine service to an entire region: fewer carcasses to transport and process, and organic matter returned far more quickly to the cycle of life.

The vulture does not hunt the living. Griffon Vultures in the Matarraña landscape, near Valderrobres in Aragon. The vulture intervenes only after life has already ended — and transforms an ending into a resource for an entire ecosystem.

The day vultures almost disappeared

To understand just how important their role is, we need only look at what happened elsewhere when vultures almost vanished. During the 1990s, populations of several vulture species across the Indian subcontinent collapsed. For some species the decline exceeded 95%, reaching as much as 99.9% for the White-rumped Vulture in certain estimates. The main cause was identified a few years later: diclofenac, a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug administered to livestock. When a vulture consumed the carcass of a recently treated animal, even small residues could prove fatal. The problem did not end with the birds. Without vultures to dispose of carcasses quickly, dead animals remained in the environment for longer or were eaten by other scavengers, particularly feral dogs. Researchers have since shown that the vultures’ disappearance had measurable consequences for human health. A study published in the American Economic Review in 2024 estimates that, in areas of India historically suited to vultures, their collapse was associated with an increase of more than 4% in human mortality.

In France, a story of return

The French sky, too, had grown empty. The Griffon Vulture had disappeared from the Grands Causses. But in the 1970s, naturalists embarked on a project that seemed daring at the time: allowing the species to return to the cliffs it had once occupied. After several years of preparation, the first vultures were released into the Jonte Gorges in December 1981. The programme continued until 1986, with a total of 58 birds released. The living world responded quickly. In 1982, the first chick born in the wild took flight. But releasing vultures was not enough. It was necessary to know whether they would survive, form pairs, where they would go and whether their descendants would remain in turn. A far more discreet undertaking then began: decades of observation, counting, ringing and monitoring. That work continues today with the LPO and its partners. It allows them to monitor population trends and to understand the movements, breeding and causes of death of these great birds of prey.

Learn more about Griffon Vulture conservation — LPO

Some birds eventually acquire a story

Through years of observing, ringing and tracking vultures, some of them almost cease to be mere dots in the sky. They become individuals whose lives can partly be reconstructed. One of them was called Quolibet. Born in the Grands Causses in 1992 and ringed while still young, he was the descendant of two vultures reintroduced a few years earlier. Much later, a GPS tracker also allowed part of his movements to be followed. Quolibet thus lived through more than thirty years in the story of the vultures’ return to the Grands Causses. His ring, followed by the observations accumulated over time, allowed naturalists to preserve the memory of a life that would otherwise simply have merged with the thousands of silhouettes crossing the sky. His full story will be told to the young Ladies and Knights in the Fellowship. For behind the figures describing an animal population are individual lives, journeys and habits… and sometimes stories that can be followed for thirty years.

In Valderrobres, a man waits for the vultures

Let us now leave the Grands Causses and return to Spain, to those landscapes of Aragon that are so dear to us. A few kilometres from Valderrobres, in the heart of the Matarraña, there is a place where the sky fills with great wings every morning. And among them walks a man pushing a wheelbarrow. His name is José Ramón Moragrega. But here, many know him as Buitreman — “the vulture man”. Born in Beceite in 1952, José Ramón watched vultures even as a child. Life later took him far from his mountains: he became a merchant seaman and travelled the world before returning to the Matarraña. Around 1990, an extraordinary story began at Mas de Bunyol. José Ramón left food for the vultures. But the birds did not trust him. They kept their distance. Still, he returned. Day after day. For a long time. Eventually, a few vultures came down. First a handful. Then more. Over the years, hundreds began to visit the site regularly.

Thirty years to earn their trust

Nothing could be hurried with the vultures. They are wild birds. They watch, keep their distance and retain the freedom to decide whether or not to come down. José Ramón Moragrega did not try to tame them. He did something far more patient: he returned. He returned to the same place. Brought food. Respected their habits. Waited. Beginning around 1990, this relationship grew over the years. At first, only a few vultures came. Then the meeting place became familiar, and increasing numbers of birds began to visit Mas de Bunyol. There is something dizzying about such a span of time. A Griffon Vulture can live for several decades. Buitreman’s story alongside them therefore covers almost an entire vulture’s lifetime. Since 2005, Mas de Bunyol has also allowed the public to witness the spectacle from a hide designed for observing the birds without going among them. Visitors discover a scene that is difficult to forget: dozens, sometimes hundreds, of great silhouettes leave the sky and come down to the ground.

At Mas de Bunyol, the vultures remain wild birds: they come to feed, then freely return to the Matarraña sky. Discover Mas de Bunyol and its vulture observatory

And above the Lands of Aragon

This story may touch us even more deeply because it takes place so close to one of Astrée’s Estates. In the Matarraña, vultures are among those presences that compel us to look upwards. They pass over the hills, olive trees, almond trees and stone villages. Their territory extends far beyond the boundaries we draw on our maps. When we discovered the Lands of Aragon, we did not merely discover a land of olive and almond trees. Little by little, we also learned to look at the life around us: the birds, plants, landscapes and human stories connected to them. This is precisely one of the purposes of Echoes of the Living World: to begin with a place we know, then look a little farther, understand what surrounds it and pass on the stories we encounter. José Ramón Moragrega did not create the vultures of the Matarraña. He devoted part of his life to them. Nor did the naturalists who enabled the Griffon Vulture to return to France ever own it. They observed, protected, accompanied and passed on what they learned. Perhaps this is what the vultures ultimately teach us.

Connect. Watch over. Pass on.