The Vulture Conservation Foundation have been awarded the Conservation Actions prize at the Biodiversity and Society Awards from the Valencian autonomous region government, Generalitat Valenciana.
Biodiversity and Society Awards
Each year for the last six years the Biodiversity and Society Awards have been given out by Generalitat Valenciana in recognition to those organisations that have been contributing to the protection and enhancement of the natural environment of Valencia.
This year we were awarded a prize during the awards in recognition of our role in the reintroduction of Bearded Vultures in the Maestrazgo region. Taking a short break from closely monitoring the progress of the Bearded Vulture breeding season the award was picked up by the Bearded Vulture Captive Breeding Network Co-ordinator, Alex Llopis. During the ceremony, which took place at the Centre for Environmental Education of the Valencian Community, Alex was awarded the prize by Francesc Quesada, Deputy Regional Minister of the Environment at the Generalitat Valenciana.
Reintroducing Bearded Vultures in Maestrazgo
The Maestrazgo region in Spain, was once home to a breeding population of Bearded Vultures, today while there are no longer any breeding pairs the region is regularly visited by birds reintroduced in Andalusia since 2006. In 2018 the project to reintroduce the Bearded Vulture to the region, led by the Generalitat of Valencia, in collaboration with the governments of the Autonomous Regions of Aragón and Catalonia, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fish, Food and Environment and us here at the Vulture Conservation Foundation began. Through the release of captive-bred birds and creating a network of supplementary feeding stations the project aims to establish a wild breeding population in the Maestrazgo region to bridge the populations in the Pyrenees and Andalusia. The first year of the project saw two birds Alos and Amic, released into the wild. Each year over the next five to 10 years the project will release two birds across the region.
