African white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus)

Mohamed bin Zayed Species project number 222528864

Eyes in the Sky – using vultures as sentinels for multi-species conservation efforts in Zambia

Rapid declines have occurred across Africa for vultures in the past 30 years. As scavengers, vultures play a vital role in the ecosystem but also act as indicators of other conservation issues e.g poisoning. Since 2013, North Carolina Zoo has been committed to vulture conservation in Tanzania, expanding work to Zambia in 2021 and Uganda in 2022. 

Our work combines on the ground conservation, capacity building of wildlife authorities and research to understand and address the threats to vultures. The impact of our approach has much wider implications for the conservation of lions and elephants. 

Our MBZ funding will support and allow continuation of our work in Zambia, where we aim to identify and address the critical threat across Kafue and Sioma Ngowezi National Parks using information from tagged vultures. Working with Panthera, African Parks and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, our system will improve existing law enforcement efforts and support species conservation. We will also continue monitoring surveys in Kafue (initiated in 2016 and repeated in 2021) to better track trends in vulture populations to assess the impact of conservation management interventions.