Members of the LIFE project “Club de Fincas por la Conservación del Oeste Ibérico”, including many employees of Rewilding Europe partner Associação Transumância e Natureza, came together late last year in the Western Iberia rewilding area to learn how to build nesting platforms. Encouraging birds to nest in protected areas such as this will help endangered local species such as vultures, eagles and storks.

This year’s final European Rewilding Network webinar, held in December, saw members from eight European countries come together online to discuss and learn the importance of leaving carrion in nature.

ARK Nature’s Circle of Life project, which aims to increase the availability of carrion in nature, began life as a groundbreaking way of helping endangered scavengers in the Netherlands. Rewilding Europe, which has already adopted the Circle of Life approach in its rewilding areas (by enabling wildlife comeback and reintroducing herbivores), is now working to scale up the project across Europe by promoting best practice, fostering dialogue and encouraging collaboration.

With the first anti-poison dog units patrolling the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area from 2016, their counterparts on the Greek side of the border are also carrying out equally valuable work.

The birds, tagged with GPS transmitters in Dadia National Park in Greece, will offer additional insight into black vulture behaviour and movement on and around the Balkan Peninsula. By supporting conservation measures, this will hopefully reinforce the comeback of this magnificent yet endangered species.

As part of the ongoing LIFE Vultures project, a growing number of griffon and black vultures in and around the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area are being tagged with GPS transmitters. The geospatial data these transmitters provide will be critical to the comeback of these magnificent yet endangered birds.

This October an exhibition titled “Lords of the Rhodopean Skies” is taking place at the Regional History Museum of the town of Kardzhali in southern Bulgaria. The aim of the exhibition is to reconnect people with nature by presenting the wild beauty and diversity of the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area.

The first weekend in September saw a crowd of more than 40 people gather in the town of Madzharovo, in Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains, to mark International Vulture Awareness Day Taking place across the world on this weekend every year, the day is designed to publicise and promote the conservation of vultures to a global audience, and to celebrate the splendour of these endangered birds.

With an informative publication, Rewilding Europe and ARK Nature present a new way to support Europe’s scavengers.

Despite its catastrophic impact on Asian vulture populations in the 1990s, veterinary diclofenac is still used and marketed in countries such as Spain and Italy. The Vulture Conservation Foundation, a partner of Rewilding Europe in the LIFE Vultures project in the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area, has launched a campaign to ban its use in Europe.