Journal
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
Volume 268, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109516
Keywords
Home range; Protected area; Scavenger; Gyps; Africa; Wide-ranging
Funding
- University of Utah
- Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center
- South African National Parks [13-11]
- University of KwaZulu-Natal's Animal Research Ethics Committee [AREC/094/015PD]
- Peregrine Fund
- National Geographic Society
- San Diego Zoo Global
- Detroit Zoological Society
- Chester Zoo
- N.E.W. Zoo
- Abilene Zoo
- AZA-Conservation Grants Fund
- Bowling for Rhinos
- USAID's Power Africa Transactions and Reform Programme through the project `Strategic Environmental Assessment for Wind Power and Biodiversity in Kenya'
- NACOSTI
- Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology, Tanzania National Parks and Tanzania Wildlife Authority
- North Carolina Zoo and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
- Disney Conservation Fund
- Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund
- Nyerere National Park
- Frankfurt Zoological Society
- Mankwe Wildlife Reserve
- Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Studentship
- Tusk Trust
- Natural Encounters Inc.
- Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust
- Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
- Columbus Zoo
- Foundation Ensemble
- Cellular Tracking Technologies
- Max Planck Institute
- Rufford Foundation
- National Research Foundation (South Africa)
- Gay Langmuir Bursary
- BirdLife South Africa
- Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA)
- Eastern Cape Department of Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEDEAT)
- Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, Fairfields Tours
- University of KwaZulu-Natal
- Nelson Mandela University
- Robert Bosch Foundation
- NSF_BSF grant [2019822]
- Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
- Eskom Holdings Soc Ltd.
- U.S.Israel Bi-national Science Foundation [BSF255/2008]
- Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation
- Minerva Center for Movement Ecology
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Protected areas are important in reducing threats to wildlife and preserving habitat. Vultures have different home range sizes based on their age and breeding status. Creating Vulture Safe Zones in Africa is challenging and requires larger areas than existing protected areas.
Protected areas are intended as tools in reducing threats to wildlife and preserving habitat for their long-term population persistence. Studies on ranging behavior provide insight into the utility of protected areas. Vultures are one of the fastest declining groups of birds globally and are popular subjects for telemetry studies, but continent-wide studies are lacking. To address how vultures use space and identify the areas and location of possible vulture safe zones, we assess home range size and their overlap with protected areas by species, age, breeding status, season, and region using a large continent-wide telemetry datasets that includes 163 individuals of three species of threatened Gyps vulture. Immature vultures of all three species had larger home ranges and used a greater area outside of protected areas than breeding and non-breeding adults. Cape vultures had the smallest home range sizes and the lowest level of overlap with protected areas. Ruppell's vultures had larger home range sizes in the wet season, when poisoning may increase due to human-carnivore conflict. Overall, our study suggests challenges for the creation of Vulture Safe Zones to protect African vultures. At a minimum, areas of 24,000 km2 would be needed to protect the entire range of an adult African White-backed vulture and areas of more than 75,000 km2 for wider-ranging Ruppell's vultures. Vulture Safe Zones in Africa would generally need to be larger than existing protected areas, which would require widespread conservation activities outside of protected areas to be successful.
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