Guest blog – International Vulture Awareness Day by Ian Parsons

Tomorrow, the first Saturday of September, is International Vulture Awareness Day (IVAD).  The aim of the day is, as the name suggests, to raise awareness of the plight of vulture species across the world. The majority of these are in big trouble, in serious danger of extinction. Regular readers of this blog will know that…

Guest Blog – An update on African and European Vultures by Chris Bowden

Chris Bowden is RSPB’s Globally Threatened Species Officer, and Programme Manager of the consortium of ‘SAVE’ partners – Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction. Chris has worked for RSPB on various threatened species, (after his Woodlark and Nightjar research days on Thetford Forest), notably the Northern Bald Ibis based in Morocco (for which he still has…

Guest Blog – The Asia vulture crisis, an update by Chris Bowden of RSPB

  Chris Bowden is RSPB’s Globally Threatened Species Officer, and Programme Manager of the consortium of ‘SAVE’ partners – Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction. Chris has worked for RSPB on various threatened species, (after his Woodlark and Nightjar research days on Thetford Forest), notably the Northern Bald Ibis based in Morocco (for which he still…

Would you like diclofenac with that ?

Tomorrow is vulture awareness day, and I see that today, staff at the RSPB HQ in Sandy are having a vulture themed lunch! ‘Pass on the diclofenac’ should be the message and that message is getting through after years of effort. I took the paper to the RSPB Board to get involved in vulture conservation…

More on vultures

I’m grateful to the Vulture Conservation Foundation for an update on situation with diclofenac (a medical drug that is a bit like aspirin for you but more like cyanide for vultures feeding on animal carcasses which contain it). A review of the evidence for the impact of diclofenac on European vultures has been produced by…