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Fake news and vultures

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 492–493 (2020)Cite this article

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Vultures have, for millennia, yielded important ecosystem support and cultural services to Old World human societies1. They and other avian scavengers consume the bulk of the biomass provided by large vertebrate carcasses, and their absence retards the rate at which nutrients are redistributed through the ecosystem, with potential detrimental effects derived from the proliferation of organisms harmful to human interests, both economic and health related1. Moreover, vultures also contribute strongly to human well-being, yielding intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic inspiration1 as well as providing direct economic benefits derived from their observation and related ecotourism activities2.

The age-old relationship between farmers and avian scavengers is, however, being threatened by the social alarm that is causing people to see vultures as undesirable species like certain large carnivores. In recent years, news items in the Spanish and French media have increasingly depicted griffon vultures as livestock predators undergoing ‘behavioural changes’ that have led them to attack not only sheep but also large animals such as cows and horses, and even dogs and humans3,4. For example, a search for ‘vulture livestock attack in Spain/France’ on Google yielded 59 news stories in the period January to December 2019 alone. Although no cases certifying griffon vultures killing healthy livestock have been published in peer-reviewed literature, this emerging human–wildlife conflict has a number of undesirable consequences including the deliberate poisoning of severely threatened scavengers5. The illegal use of poison baits continues unabated today6 and the human–vulture conflict could increase non-natural mortality effects on other species. According to the WWF–SEO/BirdLife report on the use of poisoning in Spain, more than 8,000 cases of illegal poisoning were diagnosed from 1990 to 2015. Considering a conservative estimation of the cases documented during the most recent period (2005–2015), the report includes cases affecting obligate and facultative avian scavenger species such as griffon vultures (886 individuals), bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus; 14), Spanish imperial eagles (Aquila adalberti; 84), cinereous vultures (Aegypius monachus; 231), Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus; 129) and red kites (Milvus milvus; 591)7.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Game and Wildlife Research, IREC (CSIC-UCLM), Ciudad Real, Spain

    Antoni Margalida

  2. Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC), Sevilla, Spain

    José A. Donázar

Authors
  1. Antoni Margalida
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  2. José A. Donázar
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Correspondence to Antoni Margalida.

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Margalida, A., Donázar, J.A. Fake news and vultures. Nat Sustain 3, 492–493 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0534-5

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