Dear vulture friends,

At this special time of year, we want to reach out and say thank you for supporting and following our work in 2019. We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a delightful New Year ahead.

Over 2019 we were part of some fantastic achievements, here are just a few:

• Organisation of the first-ever European Vulture Conference! In October we gathered 240 vulture experts and vulture lovers in Albufeira, Portugal, for a 3 day conference, filled with science, art and stories. 
• Four captive-bred, and 12 wild-origin (coming from rehabilitation centres in Extremadura, Spain) Cinereous Vultures were released in Bulgaria in a historic milestone for vulture conservation in the Balkans, within the Vultures Back to LIFE project. 
• The Balkan Anti-Poisoning Project, working across the Balkan Peninsula to prevent this insidious practice and protect vultures, made great strides, developing national strategies against poisoning in 6 countries.
• Four more Cinereous Vultures were secured from Spain, to be released in the Gorge du Verdon, France. 
• A new record was set in the Alps with 53 breeding Bearded Vulture pairs, that successfully fledged 38 young birds, a new record! The wild population there is firmly established and growing.
• Following the establishment of farm-operated small supplementary feeding sites in Sardinia, as part of the LIFE Under Griffon Wings project, a pair of Egyptian Vultures colonised the island naturally and bred successfully. 
• 72 Griffon Vultures successfully fledged in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains, where we are working through the LIFE Re-Vultures project.
• Faia and Rupis, Egyptian Vultures from the Douro Canyon, successfully made it to their wintering grounds in Mali and Senegal, and are being tracked with the GPS transmitters fitted as part of the LIFE Rupis project. Also Arribas, a juvenile bird tagged this year in the nest made it successfully to Africa. 
• Data from 94 GPS-tracked Egyptian Vultures, contributed by 40 authors from 31 organisations, contributed to our newest scientific publication: Spatial and Temporal Variability in Migration of a Soaring Raptor Across Three Continents (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2019).
• 3 wild Bearded Vulture breeding pairs in Andalusia produced 2 fledglings. The population shows a positive increase trend and a young reproducing age.
• Launch of a new LIFE project that was approved this year - LIFE with Vultures - aiming to preserve the vulnerable Griffon Vulture population in Cyprus.

Thank you once again, and we will continue to work hard to make 2020 another fantastic year for vultures in Europe!

The Vulture Conservation Foundation team