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The article focuses on the Egyptian Vulture's status in Ethiopia, highlighting its importance as the primary wintering ground in East Africa, addressing recent discrepancies in wintering counts, and emphasizing conservation efforts against threats such as power lines and illegal poisoning.

The article discusses the status of Egyptian Vultures in Ethiopia, emphasizing the country as a crucial wintering ground for the species in East Africa. Topics discussed include historical and recent population counts, the significant mortality due to power lines and illegal poisoning, and ongoing conservation efforts including collaboration with power companies and public awareness campaigns.

The Endangered Egyptian VultureNeophron percnopteruscongregates in communal roosts in the wintering areas and where food availability is high, where even a single threat might lead to substantial population declines. Thus, more research on the congregation sites is needed for timely detection of threats and effectively directed conservation measures. We studied bird numbers, use of roosting substrates and roosting habitat of wintering Egyptian Vultures in Ethiopia. Vultures were counted using the road-count technique in 2009, 2010 and 2013 along c. 600 km of roads in the Afar region. Over 1 000 individuals were counted each year and the sites with the highest congregations were identified. Nearly half of the birds were adults and the majority roosted on bird-safe types of electric pylons. Most of the Egyptian Vultures were found below 500 m above sea level, in bare areas, open savannas or grasslands, and their abundance was negatively related to the amount of cover of bush vegetation. The distribution of roosting birds was not affected by distance to human settlements. To avoid disasterous effects on the population of the Egyptian Vultures, we strongly recommend that the sites sheltering the highest numbers of roosting birds should be included in the Important Bird Area network, the use of poisons should be banned, and dangerous power lines should be insulated or substituted with safer types. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Assessing the effectiveness of conservation measures to reverse population declines is essential to evaluate management strategies. Management solutions such as direct protection or supplementary feeding typically aim at reducing mortality or increasing productivity, but demonstrating such demographic consequences of adopted management is often difficult. Here we assess the effectiveness of large-scale management actions aimed at the conservation of an endangered vulture on the Balkan Peninsula by extending a novel analysis to estimate seasonal adult survival from observations of unmarked individuals. We monitored Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus breeding success and territory occupancy over 11 years in three countries during which both nest guarding and supplementary feeding were carried out. We found little evidence that nest guarding and supplementary feeding increased breeding propensity (mean = 0.88 ± 0.32 standard deviation, n = 463), breeding success (0.82 ± 0.39), or the number of fledglings raised by successful pairs (1.3 ± 0.74). We estimated adult survival during the 23-week breeding season (mean = 0.936, 95% credible interval 0.889–0.968) and found no significant increase due to management. In the last 13 years 43 dead adult birds have been found during the breeding season, and 77% of confirmed mortalities were due to poisoning. Overall, the current management measures may have so far failed to halt ongoing population declines because the beneficial effects are insufficient to offset the loss of adult birds for example due to poisoning. We suggest that additional measures to slow the decline of Egyptian Vultures in the Balkans are required. In the short term, we urge governments to enforce anti-poison regulations that already exist. In the medium term, alternative approaches need to be developed that reduce the use of poisons and the associated accidental mortality of vultures and other wildlife species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]