In 1913, a hunter in the Aosta Valley fired the shot that killed the last bearded vulture in the Alps. For 73 years, the skies of the Alps were empty of Europe's largest flying bird.
Then, in 1986, a group of conservationists decided to bring it back.
Forty years and 264 released birds later, the programme has succeeded beyond almost anyone's initial projections. The Alpine bearded vulture population is now considered **self-sustaining** — no longer dependent on captive releases to maintain itself. In 2025, the population across the Alps exceeded **450 birds**, including **118 nesting pairs** and a record **68 fledglings**. One bird — released as a juvenile in 1988 — was recently found alive in the French Alps at over 37 years old, making it the oldest known wild vulture on Earth.
**The Bird**
The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) — also known as the lammergeier, from the German word for "lamb vulture" — is extraordinary in almost every way. With a wingspan of up to 2.8 metres (9.2 feet), it is the largest bird of prey in Europe. Unlike other vultures, it feeds primarily on bones, dropping them from heights of up to 80 metres onto rocks to shatter them, then consuming the bone marrow within. An adult can digest bone that would destroy a dog's stomach. Their feathers turn rust-red not from pigment, but from deliberately bathing in iron-rich soil and water — a behaviour unique among birds.
They mate for life, raise one chick per year (occasionally two), and can live for decades. They are, in every sense, the kind of animal a continent is diminished without.
**Why They Vanished**
European bearded vultures were persecuted systematically for centuries, driven by the myth that they preyed on livestock and even children — stories that gave them the name "bone-breaker" and made them targets. Farmers and hunters shot them on sight. By the early 20th century, they had been eliminated from the Alps, the Pyrenees, Corsica, and much of their wider European range. The last Alpine bird, shot in 1913, was the final casualty of a century-long campaign of extermination.
The extermination was almost total. Without intervention, bearded vultures would have remained absent from the Alps indefinitely — the habitat existed, but the birds did not.
**The Programme**
The international reintroduction programme began in 1986 at the Hohe Tauern National Park in Austria. Captive-bred juvenile vultures, raised at breeding facilities across Europe, were placed in "hacking" enclosures on remote cliff faces and gradually introduced to the wild. The first French Alpine releases followed in 1987 in Haute-Savoie.
The operation required extraordinary coordination: captive breeding programmes at zoos across multiple countries, wildlife authorities from Austria, France, Italy, and Switzerland, and a network of volunteer monitors watching release sites across thousands of square kilometres of alpine terrain.
Between 1986 and 2025, **264 juvenile birds** were released into the Alps.
**The Recovery**
Progress was slow at first. Bearded vultures take up to seven years to reach sexual maturity, and the alpine territory is vast and difficult to monitor. The first wild-born chick in the Alps hatched in 1997 — eleven years after the first release.
But by the 2010s, the population had reached critical mass. Territories were being established, pairs were breeding reliably, and the Alps were producing more wild-born birds each year than were being released from captive programmes. By 2025, the self-sustaining threshold was formally crossed: the population no longer needed supplementary releases to maintain itself.
The 2025 breeding season was the best on record: **118 nesting pairs, 68 fledglings confirmed** — more than in any previous year.
**Balthazar**
Among the most remarkable revelations of recent years was the rediscovery of a bird released in the French Alps in 1988. Named Balthazar, this bird was one of the early releases — a juvenile in the first wave of the reintroduction. He was recently found alive and apparently healthy in the French Alps, aged over 37 years. He is the oldest known wild bearded vulture ever recorded.
More than that: Balthazar was the father of the first wild-born Alpine chick in 1997. He has, in some sense, witnessed the entire arc of the recovery — from one of the first captive birds placed in the Alps, to patriarch of a now self-sustaining wild population.
**Beyond the Alps**
The success in the Alps has inspired parallel programmes. Bearded vultures are now being reintroduced to the Massif Central in France, the Giant Mountains on the Czech-Polish border, and the Andalusian highlands of southern Spain. Each project draws on the techniques and institutional knowledge developed over 40 years in the Alps.
In the French Alps, the skies are no longer empty. Wingspans of nearly three metres are once again visible on thermals above the Écrins, the Vanoise, and the Mercantour. The hunter's shot in 1913 wasn't the last chapter after all.
It just took 40 years of patient work to write what came next.
*Sources: 4vultures.org International Bearded Vulture Monitoring · Planet Mountain (Balthazar rediscovery 2025) · European LIFE programme bearded vulture projects · Bearded Vulture Conservation Fund*
