In a heartening win for African vulture conservation, twenty vulture chicks have hatched at Shamwari Private Game Reserve since the start of the breeding season on 1 July—marking a significant success for VulPro’s recently relocated Captive Breeding Programme.
Image: Supplied
With more births anticipated before the season wraps up in mid-August, this year’s hatchlings are a strong signal that the relocated vultures are thriving in their custom-built enclosures at Shamwari, following the largest vulture relocation ever attempted in South Africa.
“Vultures only lay one egg per year during breeding season, that’s it,” explains Kerri Wolter, CEO of VulPro.
“Cape Vultures only reach sexual maturity at approximately seven years old, White-Backed Vultures a little earlier and can be from five years, Lappet-faced Vultures often longer than seven years. With such low reproductive rates, we cannot sustain the current losses.”
Why every chick counts
The numbers are sobering. Even in ideal wild conditions, only about 5% of vulture chicks survive to adulthood. When that’s compounded by human threats like poisoning, powerline collisions, and habitat loss, it’s easy to see how populations plummet.
“It’s important to note that when vultures reduce to critical levels, they also stop breeding,” adds Wolter. “We need to prevent that whilst simultaneously addressing the threats.”
The success of VulPro’s breeding season is therefore more than good news—it’s a crucial lifeline.
A Global leader in African Vulture Conservation
Launched in 2015, VulPro’s Captive Breeding Programme was the first of its kind in South Africa. Since then, it’s grown into the world’s largest African vulture breeding initiative, with around 300 non-releasable birds in care.
These birds—mostly victims of energy infrastructure injuries—can no longer survive in the wild, but they now serve a higher purpose.
“What’s so special about our programme,” says Wolter, “is that all our non-releasable disabled birds are able to still have value. They’re not just sitting in an enclosure being viewed or kept on an asset register with a price tag on their heads, they are used to contribute to their wild counterparts’ survival.”
By exclusively using non-releasable vultures for breeding, VulPro sidesteps the ethical dilemma of removing healthy birds from fragile wild populations. The genetic diversity of their breeding stock—collected from across regions—ensures robust future generations.
“The captive breeding of vultures was never formally recognised as a conservation tool in South Africa prior to us launching our programme,” says Wolter.
“We spent years following the USA and European captive breeding initiatives learning, refining and growing our work… Fast-forward ten years and the threat of extinction is on our doorstep with some species showing localised extinctions in South Africa.”
Inside the delicate world of vulture breeding
Image: Supplied
Vultures are monogamous and deeply involved in chick-rearing. It’s not unusual for pairs to squabble—adorably—over who gets to incubate the egg or care for the chick.
“Sometimes they fight over who’s breeding the chick or who’s incubating the egg. They fight for those responsibilities,” says Wolter. “To me, that is quite cute. Breeding always shows me how fragile and how gentle they are.”
Each chick is the product of intricate management: from double-clutching (where a second egg is encouraged by removing the first) to meticulous record-keeping that ensures every chick is returned to its rightful parents post-hatching.
“The importance of any Captive Breeding Programme is very, very stringent record keeping,” emphasises Wolter. “You know which egg, and which chick needs to go back to which pair.”
Drawing on hard-won lessons from Asia’s near-total vulture collapse, VulPro’s early start could prevent the need to pull wild birds into captivity at crisis point.
“If anything, what we learned from that Breeding Programme is that it is never too early to start a founding population of species before you have to take birds out of the wild,” she explains. “The success of your Breeding Programme takes years to nurture.”
ALSO READ: Mission to save Cuba’s endangered rainbow snails begins
Gentle giants with a crucial role
Despite their fearsome appearance, vultures are surprisingly delicate. “You have these big dinosaur, big prehistoric type birds, and you would never consider that they would gently incubate an egg without crushing it,” Wolter reflects.
“They’re so incredibly gentle, and to me, that is just a beautiful message as to how terrifying these birds can look and seem, and yet they are very gentle beings and peaceful beings.”
Beyond their image makeover, vultures play a vital ecological role. As nature’s clean-up crew, they prevent the spread of diseases such as anthrax, rabies, and botulism by disposing of carcasses swiftly and efficiently. Without them, scavenger species like feral dogs and rats—less effective and more disease-prone—move in.
Rewriting the future of vultures in Africa
From Shamwari’s expanding facility, VulPro is proving what’s possible in conservation. Their work provides hope not only for vultures in South Africa, but for global endangered species strategies.
“Our Breeding Programme could become a lifeline in preventing some vulture species’ extinctions,” says Wolter.
Young vultures released at nine months old now carry not just the DNA of survival, but the vision of a species saved from the brink—one carefully incubated egg at a time.
Follow us on social media for more travel news, inspiration, and guides. You can also tag us to be featured.
TikTok | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
ALSO READ: Farewell, Bongi – Brave baby rhino loses his fight
