RT Journal Article
T1 Vultures and Livestock: The Where, When, and Why of Visits to Farms
A1 García Alfonso, Marina
A1 Van Overveld, Thijs
A1 Gangoso De La Colina, Laura Esther
A1 Serrano, David
A1 Donázar, José A.
AB Recent changes in European legislation have legalized the abandonment of carcasses around livestock farms, but our understanding of how vultures exploit these semi-predictable food sources is still very limited. For filling this gap, we determine the individual and ecological drivers influencing vulture visits to farms. We assessed the effects of individual characteristics of both birds and farms on the frequency of vultures’ visits to livestock facilities using data collected from 45 GPS-tagged Egyptian Vultures (Neophron percnopterus) and 318 farms (>94% of livestock) on Fuerteventura Island, Spain. Farms were more visited during the vultures’ breeding season. Farms located closer to highly predictable feeding places (i.e., vulture restaurants and garbage dumps) or with more available feeding resources were visited by more vultures, whereas those located close to roads and vultures’ breeding territories received fewer visits. Younger territorial birds visited a farm more frequently than older territorial ones, whereas older non-territorial individuals concentrated those visits on farms closer to their activity core areas compared with younger ones. Our findings indicate that visits to farms were determined by their spatial distribution in relation to the age-specific birds’ activity centers, the availability of carcasses, seasonality, and individual characteristics of vultures. These interacting factors should be considered in vulture conservation, avoiding very general solutions that ignore population structure.
PB MDPI
SN 2076-2615
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/111150
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/111150
LA eng
NO García-Alfonso, M., van Overveld, T., Gangoso, L., Serrano, D., & Donázar, J. A. (2020). Vultures and Livestock: The Where, When, and Why of Visits to Farms. Animals, 10(11), 2127. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10112127
NO This research was funded by the Dirección General de Protección de la Naturaleza (Viceconsejería de Medio Ambiente, Gobierno de Canarias), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and EU/FEDER (CGL2012-40013-C02-02, CGL2015-66966-C2-1-R, and RTI2018-099609-B-C21) and the Severo Ochoa Excellence Award from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (SEV-2012-0262). M.G.-A. was supported by a contract from “Programa de FPU del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte” (FPU13/05429). During the writing of this manuscript, L.G. was supported by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship of the European Commission (747729 “EcoEvoClim”). T.v.O. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie (“SocForVul 659008”).
NO Gobierno de Canarias
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España)
NO European Commission
NO Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (España)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 10 abr 2025