ABSTRACT
The future of vultures rests on the trends in the factors examined in this book: conservation policies, landcover change, ecological competition and social attitudes, the sustainability and fl exibility of these trends, and the likelihood of new events that may either enhance or degrade the possibilities for vulture survival. Particular points to be considered are changes in the factors for the death of vultures; poisons, electrocution and line collisions, wind turbines; shootings; habitat loss; food losses; and air collisions. There are also changes in the factors for the conservation of vultures; public attitudes, conservation policy, technological changes and landscape issues. The evidence presented in this book shows the strength for the argument that vultures are relics from the past; birds that once fed on mastodons and competed with the huge cats may have no real sustainable place in the modern world, except as recipients of handouts in vulture ‘restaurants’ and foragers for scraps in increasingly clean cities. There is also another strand; are vultures adaptive, hence their ability to forage in urban areas, or is this just a phenomenon of the smaller vultures, which behave like corvids and seagulls? Can their huge relatives adapt? Also, as the world modernizes, and sanitation becomes more effective, the urban adaptation may fade, leading to a retreat based on livestock attacks until the sources are exhausted. Shortly, will vultures go entirely extinct in the wild, or is there another future, where they reclaim part of their heritage as nature’s cleaners, contributors to ecosystems and free rather than shackled to human generosity?
