Species actions plans (SAPs) are very important planning documents that, once officially endorsed by national, regional bodies, frame the priorities for further species conservation work.
In the case of the bearded vulture and the cinereous vulture, the existing European species action plans were very old – they date from the 1990s, and thus do not reflect the wealth of knowledge we have collected since then on the two species, nor do they include some of the more recent threats and populations dynamics, including the results from the several reintroduction projects that the VCF is coordinating.
In the last two years 13 organisations, including the VCF, have been busy updating old species actions plans – or in some cases developing new ones – for 16 species, within the LIFE EUROSAP project, led by Birdlife International. Within this project the VCF was responsible to update the bearded vulture and the cinereous vulture new European species actions plans.
Following two years of work, including several workshops, and a few working drafts, we are extremely proud to produce the two final drafts that are currently undergoing a last round of consultation before being submitted to the EU.
The new SAPs for the bearded vulture and the cinereous vulture provide the latest information on the status, ecology and threats of these two vultures, and once approved by the European Commission will be used to undertake the key actions required to improve their conservation status in Europe.
These European SAPs fully link with the Vulture Multi-species Action Plan (MsAP), a global blueprint for vulture conservation in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and that covers 15 vulture species, including the bearded and the cinereous vultures, and which was co-developed by the VCF. The Vulture MsAP was recently endorsed by the Conference of the Parties of the Convention for Migratory Species, and the European plans and the global plan are fully linked and coordinated, thus providing countries in the European Union and outside coordinated plans for global conservation action on these species.
Thank you to all the colleagues that have devoted their time and expertise to develop these plans – great to be working together for bearded and cinereous vultures!
You can download the final drafts below – if you have any comments or questions, please send them to j.andevski@4vultures.org (cinereous vulture) and d.izquierdo@4vultures.org (bearded vulture) until the 31st December 2017.
Final draft European Species Action Plan for the bearded vulture Bearded vulture EuroSAP_2017_v2.6docx (1 Adobe Acrobat Document 1.9 MB Download Final draft European Species Action Plan for the cinereous vulture LIFE14 PRE UK002 Cinereous Vulture Actio Adobe Acrobat Document 2.0 MB Download
