France’s vulture population is growing, thanks to a reintroduction campaign that began in the 1980s after the birds all but disappeared decades earlier. But according to some farmers, the return of the birds has brought challenges as well as rewards.

Watching vultures feed is an impressive sight. Dozens of birds with wingspans of up to two metres descend simultaneously on to an animal carcass, jostling to get as close as possible.

“It's a real melée, a real scrum. They really go in on each other, they jump on each other’s backs. Anything goes,” says Robert Straughan, looking down over the edge of a cliff at a clearing 100 metres below, where he has just sent a sheep carcass on a zip line pulley.

Straughan, who is vulture project director for the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) in the Grands Causses – an area of high limestone plateaus and deep river gorges in France's highland Massif Central region – collects sheep carcasses from farmers three times a week and brings them here, and to another feeding site in the Tarn River gorge.

While most farmers in France use a collection service to remove the carcasses of dead animals, which takes them to an industrial rendering plant, in the Grands Causses 120 farms have vulture feeding sites, where they leave carcasses on their land for the birds to consume.

A handful of farmers in the area also work directly with the LPO, which collects their carcasses within 48 hours.

“We're doing work which even the farmers don’t necessarily like doing – dragging the carcasses about and things like that,” Straughan says. He holds up a scope to scan the birds feeding below, looking for those with identification rings on their legs.

“These vultures know this area. They more or less know when to come, and they know there's no danger. They'll come in really close to us, which doesn't really usually happen. But here they know that we pose no threat to them,” says Straughan.

Back from the brink, the bearded vulture makes a cautious return to French Alps 'Bad press' While there is no threat today, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries people shot and poisoned vultures, which were viewed with suspicion, associated with death and decay.

Vultures can eat dead animals at almost any stage of decomposition, thanks to their highly acidic stomachs which kill most microbes and viruses.

“Vultures get a bad press. Everybody thinks, ‘oh, vultures... death, dirty birds’... even in the way they are portrayed in art,” Straughan says.

“But when you look into vultures and you understand how they function and the important role they play in cleaning an ecosystem, the role they play with farmers, you find that they're quite wonderful birds – even if they're not always that pretty, depending on whose eyes you look through.”By the 1940s, vultures had all but disappeared from France.

Then in 1976 the government designated the griffon vulture a protected species, and a few years later conservationists, working with farmers in the Grands Causes, began work on a reintroduction programme.

The region boasts the ideal conditions for the birds: craggy limestone cliffs for nests and plenty of sheep farms to provide a food source.

Between 1981 and 2006 around 300 griffon vultures were reintroduced. Today there are more than 1,200 breeding pairs in the Grands Causses, or two-thirds of the population in France.

Success decided by species Griffon vultures feed primarily on soft tissue, and are usually the first to arrive at a carcass. The three other European vulture species have had less success. There are fewer than 40 breeding pairs of black vultures, which feed on skin and tendons, and three breeding pairs of Egyptian vultures, which pick meat from between bones. There are no breeding pairs of bearded vultures, which eat the bones themselves.

Straughan notes the presence of two black vultures at the feeding site, a few minutes after the first scrum of griffon vultures.

"They come in usually second. They're a bit stronger and they bust their way on to the carcass and get the parts they want.”“They're very, very effective,” he notes, as the vultures strip the carcass in less than 10 minutes.

More than half of endangered species in France are not protected: report After eating, the vultures head to a nearby tank of water.

“After the feed they really like to go and have a drink and a bath as well, and usually you'll see them sitting on the rocks with their wings open, a bit like cormorants, to dry off,” explains Straughan.

However, this is a cause of tension with farmers. The area’s porous limestone does not retain water, so farmers provide troughs for their sheep to drink from – which attract the vultures.

“That's problematic because afterwards the sheep won't drink, and so the farmer has to change the water regularly,” Straughan says. “But we work with the farmers and try to find systems to make the troughs less attractive for the vultures.”Solutions such as floating covers have been introduced, and they are becoming increasingly necessary as the vulture population grows.

Attacks on animals Water use is not the only point of friction. There have been reports from farmers that vultures have attacked animals they believe were still alive at the time.

The first reports appeared in the early 2000s, and authorities in Aveyron, Lozère and other departments have since put in place phone numbers for farmers to call in the case of suspected attacks. An inspector is then dispatched, sometimes accompanied by a vet, to determine the cause of death.

Lilia Damian, who is in charge of relations with farmers at the LPO, says in the vast majority of cases the conclusion was that the animals were already dead when the vultures arrive. Attacks on live animals are “very unusual”, she says.

“They are on animals that are consistently very weak, with a very low life expectancy. It’s not just an animal that’s a bit tired and not moving much.”A 2018 report by researchers from France’s then national wildlife agency, the ONCFS, found that of the 156 suspected attacks reported over the previous seven years, 63 involved vultures.

In 15 of those cases, vultures arrived before the animals died, and either accompanied or worsened the animals’ decline but did not cause the deaths.

“Griffon vultures do not have the physical capacity to prey on a live animal,” Damian says. “Their beaks are not very powerful. It is the same with the legs. Compared with an eagle’s talons, they are not powerful or able to grasp. They are really just adapted for walking, and they cannot hold on to an animal.”However, she adds that the growth in population means the birds arrive faster, sometimes before a farmer can locate the dying animal.

“Because they forage in groups, their searches are inevitably becoming more efficient. They arrive faster at a carcass. Before it could take several hours, which gave the farmer time to notice. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. The animals are also consumed more quickly.”However, she says the number of suspected vulture attacks has not increased, even as the vulture population has risen dramatically. EU lowers protection for wolves as tensions grow over livestock attacks A balanced relationship Nonetheless, Damian says these concerns colour how people view the birds, which can be an issue when it comes to conservation efforts.

Farmers’ unions and representatives have called for limits on the vulture population, which the LPO argues is not the right approach, arguing that natural limits on food and habitat will regulate the population.

“When people talk about there being too many, I often ask: ‘compared to what?’,” says Damian. “Ecologically, a population is limited either by its habitat or by its food supply. If we reach a point where there isn’t enough food for all the vultures, there will be higher mortality. So the population will hit a plateau and self-regulate based on the available food.”For now, as farmers continue to use their feeding stations or the LPO’s collection service, there is sufficient food and the griffon vultures are doing well.

“There are for sure a lot of griffon vultures now, more than before. The population is doing well, and the reintroduction has been a success. That said, other species are in a completely different state of conservation,” says Damian.

Unlike similarly reintroduced predators such as wolves and bears, vultures depend on humans – and can also be quite useful to them.

“It's almost entirely down to the good relationship which we have with farmers, and their willingness to use the vultures as a way of a carcass disposal system, if you like,” says Straughan. “It's a big benefit for them and it's a big benefit for the vultures too.”