Cause Index

VulPro

REHABILITATION
In an effort to decrease the continual loss of birds, VulPro rehabilitates injured vultures with the goal always being to release every able-bodied individual to the wild. Most of our rehabilitation occurs at our rehabilitation and breeding centre in the North West Province. Kate Webster, our Eastern Cape project partner, manages a rehabilitation unit, based out of her family farm in the Eastern Cape Province, where she cares for injured vultures in the region before either releasing them or sending them to the centre for further treatment or housing. Since VulPro's inception over 530 Cape Vultures, 115 White-backed Vultures, 12 Lappet-faced Vultures and 2 White-headed Vultures have come into the facility primarily through rehabilitation.

We collect injured or grounded birds from every corner of southern Africa and train other organisations and individuals in emergency vulture care. Our busiest rehab season is from December through to and including March when fledgling Vultures are learning how to fly, forage, and compete with experienced adults at carcasses. Often young vultures are found wandering on the ground, starving, and unable to find appropriate take off sites to utilise wind currents and thermal updrafts. They simply require food and time to gain their strength and improve body condition before they can be released again. Occasionally the young birds are so emaciated they require more intensive care.

Our rehabilitation centre has expanded drastically over the last few years with an influx of birds irreparably damaged by power line collisions and electrocutions by far the biggest threat to the birds in the Magaliesberg and Eastern Cape region and Provinces respectively. Vultures are incredibly resilient and can survive for weeks while grounded with broken wings. Unfortunately, the majority of these injuries are too severe or found too late to save the limb. Veterinarians at Ondersterpoort (University of Pretoria, Faculty of veterinary sciences) and the Broedestroom Veterinary Clinic routinely assist with amputations and other surgical procedures. We currently house over 265 vultures, the majority of which are non-releasable.

CONSERVATION BREEDING AND TRANSLOCATIONS
VulPro's conservation breeding programme began in 2011 with a small Cape Vulture colony and one incubator. As our captive non-releasable population continues to expand and mature, our breeding programme has seen a dramatic increase. In this way, we allow non-releasable birds to contribute to the wild populations. Our breeding programme now houses pairs of Cape Vultures, African White-backed Vultures, Lappet-faced Vultures, and White-headed Vultures.

Conservation breeding and reintroduction programmes have been successfully implemented for several European vulture species (Eurasian Griffon Vulture, Bearded Vulture, Cinereous Vulture, Egyptian Vulture) all over Europe and are in progress for Asian species (Long-billed Vulture, Slender-billed Vulture, Oriental White-backed Vulture) in India, Pakistan, and Nepal. The need for these programmes in Africa is immense; however, VulPro is one of only two breeding facilities on the continent committed to releasing offspring to the wild. We work to annually improve our protocols increasing our efficiency and success, as well as share our protocols with other organisations to benefit vultures continent-wide. While the programme started as a small endeavour, we now have world-class incubation facilities which care for up to 30 eggs a year. Ideally, each of our breeding pairs would be allowed to incubate, hatch, and raise their own chicks, yet for some pairs this is not possible. Every year some chicks are hand-raised and returned to the parents around 12 days old at which time the pair takes over all responsibilities.

The first 11 chicks in the programme were released in February 2015 at VulPro's breeding facility in the Magaliesberg Mountains to supplement the local wild population. Three of these chicks were raised at the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria, while seven were raised at VuPro. Every chick was fitted with patagial wing tags and GPS tracking devices. Due to the habitual food supply at VulPro's vulture restaurant, none of the chicks left the release site and only made short excursions (less than 8km and/or less than 4 days) off the property. Consequently, we built a new release enclosure at an undisclosed location adjacent to a vulture feeding restaurant and a vulture colony to encourage release vultures to travel further. In 2017 12 captive bred vultures were released from the new site along with the sedentary survivors from the 2015 releases. In 2018 seven captive reared Cape Vultures were released from this site too. With each new release, methods; procedures and protocols change to improve the results of the releases. Analysis of the tracking data of these captive reared vultures indicate that the releases have been successful within an overall 60% of the released birds still surviving in the wild.

RESEARCH
VulPro's research programmes cross a broad range of professional fields from veterinary, husbandry, breeding biology, spatial movements patterns, morphology, genetics to conservation threats and mitigation. We actively seek to build collaborations with other organisations within the local, national and international environments. Students are welcome to contact us from academic levels ie diplomas and upwards if they wish to collaborate. We currently have agreements within South Africa with the following universities; the University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria however, we are happy to work with any university should a student be based at a different academic institution. Please feel free to contact our research manager at research@vulpro.com for assistance in this matter. Below you can find a list of some our current research areas which we are always looking to expand on.

VETERINARY RESEARCH
VulPro is proud to partner with the SAVE Project (Saving Asian Vultures from Extinction) and the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Veterinary Sciences. Through pharmacological research conducted at VulPro with non-releasable African White-backed and Cape Vultures, the toxicity of the drug Diclofenac was confirmed, providing data which facilitated the drug's legislative ban in several countries and continents. Through similar trials, Meloxicam, also known as Metacam, was determined to be the only known truly vulture-safe alternative NSAID. VulPro has also been instrumental in aiding toxicological research of Ketaprofen, Carprofuren, Flunixin, and Phenalbutazone.

EX-SITU RESEARCH
Our ex-situ population of Cape Vultures is one of the largest in the world. We consider this a privilege and honour and we see one of our roles is to learn more about the secrets of the species biology, husbandry, morphology and veterinary norms. We continually link this information in interface between the wild and captive populations that we work with. Current projects include a comparison of veterinary treatments for the treatment of bumble-foot, the morphological differences between male and female species, the relationship of different environments that cause stress bars in vulture plumage, egg shape and the relationship to successful hatching of vulture chicks, genetic relationships of founder ex-situ populations and establishing a range of veterinary baseline information from wild, captive and rehabilitated vultures.

POPULATION MONITORING
Population monitoring is vital for understanding any population of threatened or declining species. It informs whether conservation efforts which have been and which are currently being implemented are having the desired effects over time. We run an active tagging and monitoring programme where information is collected into a tagging database, this information currently stands at over 40 000 entries. We have a few research projects on the go utilising this data to determine survival of the populations, to assist in determining the fate of released vultures after the transmitter's life comes to an end, to understand vulture restaurant utilisation and, foraging and landscape utilisation.

BREEDING MONITORING AND BIOLOGY
Census's of vultures at breeding sites forms a good baseline to understanding trends within breeding populations. Cape Vultures are colonial cliff nesters that have been the recipient of much conservation action, yet they are still declining in some areas. Consequently, monitoring is a proactive way to identify declines in a standardised manner across years so that investigations into the threats in a localised area can be conducted in a timely manner. This allows implementation of mitigation measures and prevents losses from the population. VulPro focuses on six of the Cape Vulture colonies; in the North West, Gauteng and Limpopo provinces and in Botswana. This information informs other actions that VulPro implements.

Other species of vultures found in Southern Africa are mostly tree-nesters, little is known about the breeding biology and breeding site selection of these species. VulPro has been monitoring a range of different sites across six locations. Nest site activity is recorded annually at these field sites and camera traps are utilised at some nest sites to expand on the understanding of vulture biology and to identify potential localised threats. VulPro continually seeks to expand on this work to other sites and we encourage landowners to contact us if they notice breeding vultures on their land. Furthermore, if you are interested in becoming a volunteer to assist us in the monitoring of these species we encourage you to contact us: admin@vulpro.com

SPATIAL MOVEMENT PATTERNS
VulPro currently has over 90 GPS transmitter data sets that are stored and are being utilised for different research projects. We currently have 110 transmitters active. This data is used to identify hot spots for mitigation of dangerous power lines, identify active or popular feeding and bathing sites as well as unknown breeding and roosting sites, and occasionally identifies the cause of mortalities. Current projects include the identification of corridors of vulture movements in relation to power lines and the potential risk, foraging behaviour and land use of different vultures and identification of different roosting sites for different vulture species.

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