NECROPHAGUS BIRDS OF PREY AND TRANSHUMANCE

All European Vultures, namely the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), the black vulture (Aegypius monachus), the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) and the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) are almost exclusively necrophagous species, so it is not surprising that they are associated with extensive livestock farming and agroforestry landscapes.

Humans have been associated with vultures from the dawn of civilization to the present day. Originally, humans followed vulture flocks to find and steal meat from the fresh carcasses that vultures had located and were feeding on. In modern times, by contrast, vultures follow humans and the herds of farm animals that have replaced those of ungulates or, more recently, gather in places were carcasses of intensive farming units are disposed of (Panagiotopoulou et al. 2018).

Figure 1: The map (left) shows frequent vulture flights in summer in western Greece, as recently recorded by satellite telemetry. For example, the vulture coded H2 (right), started in the morning from the colony in Palairos, wandered across the southern Pindos mountain range, flew almost up to the city of Ioannina and returned to roost in the colony of Kleisoura in Messolonghi, travelling about 500 km in one day (map source: google earth) © Picture of griffon vulture: Yannis Roussopoulos.

Particularly in the southern Balkans, characterized by an extremely varied relief, a sequence of agroforestry landscapes seems to have dominated the wider area until the pre-industrial period, starting from the coastal areas and reaching up to the high mountains.

These landscapes, carved by extensive livestock farming (either transhumant or around villages) and agriculture around scattered settlements, were also linked to the evolution of various cultural systems and the particular cultural identity of local societies that had been practicing agroforestry for centuries. In particular, the ‘savannah-like’ woodland landscapes and the wooded pastures are very similar to those created at the end of the glacial period. They were probably the continuation of the African savannah extending along the entire eastern Mediterranean, where herds of wild ungulates seasonally moved, followed naturally by scavenging vultures. Recently, the application of satellite telemetry to tagged griffon vultures born in their last colonies in the Balkans (and also to migrating Egyptian vultures) show that they still follow the same route, foraging in agroforestry landscapes in the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa, reaching as far as the Iran-Iraq border, in land- scapes strongly reminiscent of semi-mountainous Greece and where extensive livestock farming and small-scale agriculture around villages is still the main force shaping the cultural landscapes (Tsiakiris et al. 2018).

Although the collapse of vulture populations worldwide has been mainly associated with the widespread use of poison baits, which is linked to the intensification of livestock production and the global effort to reduce losses by carnivorous mammals, the last seven continental nuclei of permanent vulture presence in the Balkans (Peshev et al. 2021) have largely maintained the agroforestry landscape that meets their needs. Typical areas like these in our country are found in Eastern Thrace, Western Macedonia, and especially in Aitoloakranania, where together with the mountains of southern Pindos they constitute the only and most extensive similar nuclei in the Balkans, where vultures still live without supporting conservation actions (e.g. artificial feeding places or “vulture restaurants”). It was recently found, again with the help of satellite telemetry, that they travel distances of up to 500 km per day (Figure 1), searching for dead animals in the extensive pastures (wood pastures, scrublands and mountainous upland grasslands) where extensive livestock farming has been practiced for centuries (Tsiakiris et al. 2014, see Figure 2).

Similar landscapes in Crete are home to the highest density and the largest number of vultures in the world, and the only, now partly safe, island population of bearded vulture on the planet. The same is true for the last three areas where black vultures have been breeding until recently, namely Aetoloakarnania, Olympus, and Eastern Thrace. The latter still maintains the only viable nuclei of the species in Eastern Europe, not only thanks to the conservation actions of their last colony in Evros’ Dadia but also due to a large area in the eastern Rhodopes, where the local Pomak population continues to maintain the largest agroforestry landscape in the Balkans. Finally, a recent study on the breeding habitat of the globally threatened Egyptian Vulture (Oppel et al. 2017) showed that it prefers agroforestry mosaics, often around settlements and livestock facilities. Combining the current distribution maps of vultures in the continental Balkans, one would be surprised that these primarily occur in border areas, where often for political reasons agroforestry landscapes with a strong mosaic of land use still dominate, resembling the pre-industrial forestpasture landscapes in the pastoral areas of the rest of central and northern Europe.