Decades after its release into the wild, a super-ageing, bone-crunching bearded vulture, called Balthazar, (picture above), reveals a major conservation success.
In the autumn of 2025, wildlife experts in the French Alps made a surprising discovery: a frail, weakened, bearded vulture found lying on the ground, turned out to be Balthazar, a bird released under a conservation programme in 1988, who had vanished from recent observations. Having been presumed dead, at over 37 years old, he is in fact the oldest bearded vulture ever to have been recorded in the wild. Over his long life, Balthazar witnessed the return of his own species to Alpine skies and cliffs, as bearded vultures have soared back from local extinction.
Bearded vultures are majestic, cliff-nesting birds with wing spans of 2.5m (8.2ft) or more, about the size of a flying door. Their diet is one of their many intriguing features; they are thought to be the only animal that is ossivorous; meaning, they feed mainly on bones – the Spanish name for bearded vulture, quebrantahuesos (bone-breaker). The name hints at the complex acrobatics this diet involves. The birds scavenge bones from carcasses, then drop them onto rocks from a great height to smash them into smaller pieces – they often have favourite bone-breaking sites, known as ossuaries, close to their nests.
These bone-smashing birds used to roam the mountains of southern Europe, but were hunted into extinction in the Alps, and were last seen there in the early 1900s They have survived only as tiny wild populations in some other areas of Europe. Beginning in 1986, however, and over a number of decades, conservationists released a total of over 260 bearded vultures, bred in captivity, into the Alpine regions of Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany. Balthazar was among those early releases – he fathered the first chick raised in the wild in the Alps, after the species had been absent for decades.
Today, bearded vultures are successfully breeding and raising chicks in the wild again. In 2025, the wild population of bearded vultures in the Alps passed 100 breeding pairs for the first time. The population is now self-sustaining. It is a very successful story, a very beautiful story, says José Tavares, the director of the Vulture Conservation Foundation, one of the main organisations behind the reintroduction programme. He adds, it is a huge success, demonstrating that when there is will, and a little bit of funding and a little bit of political support, we can actually reverse the loss of biodiversity and achieve fantastic results.
Humans and bearded vultures have an extraordinarily long shared history in Europe. A study of ancient vulture nests in cliff caves in southern Spain, which had been re-used by the birds for generations, found an astonishing range of historical artefacts in them, including a 13th-Century sandal. But that co-existence has also been marked by persecution. In the late 19th, early 20th Centuries, there was rampant persecution of bearded vultures in the Alps, says Tavares. He points out that an old German name for the vultures is Lämmergeier (lamb-vulture) as they were mistakenly believed to hunt lambs. In reality, vultures actually play a crucial role in keeping ecosystems healthy, by devouring dead animals and preventing the spread of disease. However, their path to survival has not always been easy.
Historically, the 19th Century was a very dark time for wildlife in general and large carnivores and raptors in particular. There were bounties for hunters bringing back the carcass of a bearded vulture, explains Julien Terraube, a senior researcher at the French Biodiversity Agency, who has co-authored a 2025 assessment of the bearded vulture reintroduction programme in the Alps. The study finds that both the number of birds and their breeding success – meaning, their ability to raise chicks in the wild, as measured by what proportion of nests with eggs lead to a fledgling – have increased over time throughout the Alpine region, showing that the reintroduction programme has been successful.
In addition to the reintroduction programme, a number of factors have helped the bearded vultures come back to the Alps. Bearded vultures are now a protected species, and hunting them is banned. Also, as other species such as ibex and chamois have rebounded thanks to wider conservation measures, there is more food for the vultures to scavenge.
As for Balthazar, the elderly vulture from the first generation of returners: he is currently being cared for in one of the conservation centres as he was too waek to be left in the wild, Tavares says. Tavares’ hope is that the Alpine revival of bearded vultures will be replicated by reintroduction projects in other parts of Europe.
