The Annual Bearded Vulture Meeting has been cancelled for the first time in decades due to COVID-19, but we will still celebrate Bearded Vultures! The Vulture Conservation Foundation (VCF) is organising a 3-hour webinar, open to all, to discuss the latest updates and results of Bearded Vulture conservation and research projects in Europe and beyond! Join us on Friday, 13 November, from 2 pm – 5 pm CET.
Overview of Webinar
First Session
The return of the Bearded Vulture in the Alps and other European regions marks the commitment of multiple stakeholders dealing with different aspects of vulture conservation and research! During the first session of the Webinar, speakers will review the latest results and future strategies of the conservation projects of the species in Europe. We will start with the 2019/20 captive-breeding season that faced one of the biggest crisis since the beginning of the programme but achieved great results nonetheless thanks to quick responses and adaptation strategies to COVID-19 consequences. Then, we will examine the 2020 releases of captive-bred birds and reproduction of the species in the wild. Following this, we will look into the exciting movements of birds in the wild, coordinated by the IBM pan-European network, before moving into revelations made from the genetic data. Then, we will go over the release strategy for 2021, which will be followed by the first Q&A session and a short break.
Second session
The second session will resume exploring conservation actions and measures of the species in two other continents. First, Tulsi Subedi will uncover the movement ecology of the Himalayan Bearded Vulture and discuss the threats the species face based on his research — the first using GPS transmitter in the Bearded Vulture’s Asian range. Next, our colleagues from Southern Africa will discuss how they are aiming to preserve and boost the Bearded Vulture (sub-species) population in Southern Africa, which is on the brink of extinction. They will discuss how they are building a captive-breeding programme from scratch to breed offspring for their eventual release in the wild as well as the fieldwork and monitoring actions carried out to protect and implement targeted conservation actions in the wild. Finally, we will review the latest and most important Bearded Vulture research before our final Q&A session and a quick wrap up of the entire Webinar.
Registration
The Webinar will be live and will be hosted on Zoom. You need to register to attend the Webinar on Zoom.
It will also be live-streamed on our Facebook and YouTube pages.
