A vulture restaurant is a site where carrion, decaying flesh from dead animals, is deposited in order to be consumed by vultures, and is sometimes referred to more generally as supplemental feeding or provisioning. These stations can also be referred to as vulture feeding sites, vulture feeding stations, and vulture safe zones. This supplemental feeding practice is used to provide vultures with reliable, non-contaminated food sources or to aid in monitoring schemes. Vulture restaurants have been instituted as a method of vulture conservation in Europe and Africa since the 1960's and 70's, when vulture populations began to decline. This strategy is used because often population declines are attributed to low food availability, food contamination or insufficient nutritional quality, or feeding from human areas leading to conflict. Notably, large vulture population declines in South Asia, referred to as the Asian or Indian vulture crisis, and Africa, referred to as the African vulture crisis, have brought renewed attention to the uses and impacts of vulture restaurants. Vulture restaurants are used in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America for various conservation and management plans. They can help combat food-derived threats to vultures, such as diclofenac or lead contamination or conflict with ranchers and poachers. The first vulture restaurant was built in South Africa in 1966. Vulture restaurants operate in a number of countries, including Nepal, India, Cambodia, South Africa, Eswatini, and Spain.
Efficacy The goal of most vulture restaurants is to decrease vulture mortality events resulting from starvation, food contamination, and human contact. Multiple programs have seen increases in vulture survival and growth in colonies following the implementation of vulture restaurants, including populations of endangered Cape Griffon vultures in South Africa and the critically endangered white-rumped vulture in Pakistan. In reintroduction programs, vulture restaurants have often been considered successful in aiding with the monitoring and wellbeing of released birds. However, vulture restaurants do not themselves address the underlying causes of vulture population crashes. Some studies find that vulture restaurants and other methods of supplemental feeding are responsible for sustaining the current vulture population levels and restaurant closures may result in population crashes. In other cases, the implementation of vulture restaurants in response to an acute crisis event, such as a severe bovine disease outbreak leading to limited safe carrion for vultures, has been successful in mitigating the crisis but created lasting changes in habitat feeding quality and scavenger behavior. In many instances, however, the efficacy of vulture restaurants is unclear due to a lack of adequate monitoring.
California condor The California condor is a North American vulture species with an intensive reintroduction and management program. Vulture restaurants are used commonly throughout the condor's range as a means of reducing the risk of food contamination for this at-risk species and to help monitor the location and status of released individuals. Some of the leading causes of death within the condor species are connected to lead toxicity from spent ammunition and garbage ingestion. Condors, unlike some other vulture species, have not become fully dependent on feeding sites, though they do make use of them. Because of this, they have not been entirely successful at reducing lead toxicity, as birds tend to forage from contaminated carcasses in addition to the carcasses provided and there have been instances of accidental contamination of provisioned carcasses. Additionally, it was found that the presence of nearby vulture restaurants does not reduce the amount of trash foraged by condors and given to their chicks as food. Scheduled food provisioning at vulture restaurants may also alter natural ranging and parenting behaviors. Their more consistent success, however, has been in monitoring and caring for released individuals. Vulture restaurants provide a guaranteed social group for newly released vultures, and allow researchers easy access to check on populations and capture animals when needed, to change out GPS transmitters or perform veterinary care.
White-rumped vulture Vulture restaurants are a common part of management strategies for the endangered white-rumped vulture. This species has undergone large declines along with other Asian vulture species as a result of toxicity from the livestock anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, in addition to other causes. When monitored, vulture restaurants seem to decrease white-rumped vulture mortality though they do not eliminate it. White-rumped vulture populations have stabilized in some regions of Nepal that provision diclofenac-free carcasses from the community, but vultures large ranges allow for continued exposure to the drug in regions that do not restrict its use.
Vulture restaurant ecotourism Vulture restaurants have become the site of ecotourism activities. In many cases, tourists pay a fee to enter a viewing area and watch the vulture restaurants and observe the wildlife that gather there. This can have benefits for encouraging conservation, spreading awareness of threats to vultures, and reducing conflict between vultures and nearby human populations, but these operations face some criticisms as well. The practice of prioritizing tourist access to these locations may lead to inappropriate sites being used as restaurants, such as areas near powerlines where vultures may have collisions or areas close to human populations where vultures may interfere with livestock operations.
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