Eurasian Black or Monk Vulture

'''Common Name:''' Eurasian Black or Monk Vulture

 

'''Status:''' Near threatened; The Black Vulture has declined over most of its range in the last 200 years due to poisoning by eating poisoned bait put out to kill wolves and other predators, and to higher hygiene standards reducing the amount of available carrion.  It is currently listed as near threatened. The decline has been the greatest in the western half of the range, with extinction in many European countries (Portugal, France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Romania) and northwest Africa (Morocco, Algeria). More recently, protection and deliberate feeding schemes have allowed some local recoveries in numbers, particularly in Spain, where numbers increased to about 1,000 pairs by 1992 after an earlier decline to 200 pairs in 1970. Elsewhere in Europe, very small, but now increasing numbers breed in Bulgaria and Greece, and a re-introduction scheme is under way in France. Trends in the small populations in Ukraine (Crimea) and European Russia, and in Asian populations, are not well recorded. In the former USSR, it is still threatened by illegal capture for zoos, and in Tibet by rodenticides. Its 2007 global population is estimated to number 5,200-10,000 pairs.