In 1913, a farmer in the French Alps shot a bearded vulture — one of Europe's largest and most distinctive birds, with a wingspan approaching three metres — and the species was officially gone from France. Gone from the entire Alpine range, in fact. Extirpated. Locally extinct.
More than a century later, in 2025, a new count came in:
**118 nesting pairs across the Alps. The first time more than 100 have been recorded since the modern era began.** And in France alone: 29 breeding pairs, with 17 young fledging successfully.
The bearded vulture is back.
**Who They Are**
The bearded vulture (*Gypaetus barbatus*) is not a bird you forget once you've seen one. In a family of large scavengers, it is the specialist — the strange one, the one that found a niche no other animal could occupy and engineered its entire biology around it.
It eats **bones**.
Not just bones as a supplement. Bones as 70–90% of its diet. When the other scavengers — vultures, eagles, crows — have stripped a carcass of every shred of meat, the bearded vulture moves in and claims what remains. Bones up to the size of a small femur are swallowed whole and dissolved by highly acidic stomach acid. Larger bones present a different strategy: the bird carries them aloft — sometimes to heights of 500 metres — and drops them repeatedly onto the same rocks (*ossuaries*, places used for generations) until they shatter, then descends to eat the fragments.
This dietary specialisation makes them a keystone species in alpine ecosystems: they provide a cleaning service that no other bird performs, removing skeletal remains that would otherwise persist for years.
Their appearance matches their nature. Adults develop a rust-red chest, stained by deliberately bathing in iron-rich mud — a behaviour unique among birds and still not fully explained. They have a black 'beard' of bristly feathers at the base of their beak. Their eyes are pale yellow with a red ring. In flight, with a wingspan up to 2.8 metres, they are unmistakable — diamond-tailed, narrow-winged, gliding along cliff faces with minimal wing movement, riding thermals at altitude for hours.
They were once feared as 'lamb-stealers' and 'child-snatchers' — legends that were false but cost them dearly. By the early 20th century, persistent persecution had wiped them out across the Alps entirely.
**The Recovery Mission**
In 1986, a multinational conservation effort began under the coordination of the **Vulture Conservation Foundation**, working with national wildlife agencies across France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and other Alpine nations. The programme involved:
- **Captive breeding** of bearded vultures at a network of European zoos - **Release programmes** beginning in 1987, with birds released in carefully selected mountain sites with minimal human disturbance - **Feeding stations** providing supplemental bones during the critical early years, reducing pressure on pairs establishing territories - **Monitoring networks** tracking individuals by wing tags, GPS transmitters, and direct observation - **Education campaigns** working with farming communities to address historical fears and hostility
Between 1987 and 2024, a total of **over 260 bearded vultures** were released across the Alpine range. The releases are now largely complete — the wild population is self-sustaining and growing under its own momentum.
**The Numbers Tell the Story**
The population trajectory across the Alps:
- 1997: First successful wild breeding pair in France since local extinction - 2020: Approximately 50 breeding pairs across the Alps - 2024: 92 territorial pairs across the Alps; France records 17 successful fledglings - 2025: **118 nesting pairs** — first time over 100 in modern history; **67 fledglings** across the Alpine range
For a long-lived raptor with low reproductive rates (typically one chick per year, and only once territory and mate are fully established), that growth curve represents decades of successful intervention paying compound interest.
**France's New National Action Plan (2026–2035)**
In early 2026, France officially adopted a new **National Action Plan for the Bearded Vulture** covering the decade to 2035. Targets include:
- Growing the national population from 29 to **54 breeding pairs** in the French Alps - Expanding the species' range within France to new suitable habitats - Continued monitoring and anti-poisoning measures (accidental lead poisoning from hunter-killed carcasses remains a significant threat) - Public engagement to sustain the goodwill that has replaced the historic hostility
**Why This Matters**
The bearded vulture's return is not just a conservation success story. It is an ecological story. Across the Alps, where the birds now soar again, the bone-cleaning function that disappeared in 1913 is being restored. Hikers who walk the high routes of the French Alps, the Pyrenees, the Dolomites, are now beginning to encounter a bird that their great-grandparents never saw — that no European alive in the 20th century had a chance to see in these mountains.
In conservation terms, the bearded vulture represents something specific and important: proof that apex scavengers, once extirpated, can be returned if the political will and scientific capacity exist to do it. The programme took 40 years. It required international cooperation, sustained funding, and the patience to watch slow-reproducing birds build a population one chick at a time.
In 2025, more than 100 pairs nested. In the Alps. In the country that shot the last one in 1913.
From zero to a hundred. 🦅🏔️
*Sources: Vulture Conservation Foundation (4vultures.org) · French Ministry of Ecological Transition · International Bearded Vulture Monitoring 2025 Report · Good Good Good (March 2026) · European LIFE Programme · French National Action Plan for the Bearded Vulture 2026-2035*
